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Immigrant Life in NYC Slums 1890

Jacob Riis documents the living conditions of immigrants in late 19th century New York City. He describes the Italian immigrants who settle in the slums, living in poor conditions and engaging in gambling and violence on Sundays. He also depicts Chinatown as dull and secretive, with residents who receive visitors with annoyance and distrust. Finally, he outlines the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of the Jewish quarter, called Jewtown, where disease spreads due to lack of food and fresh air, and children convalescing from illnesses interact with clothing destined for sale.

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200 views2 pages

Immigrant Life in NYC Slums 1890

Jacob Riis documents the living conditions of immigrants in late 19th century New York City. He describes the Italian immigrants who settle in the slums, living in poor conditions and engaging in gambling and violence on Sundays. He also depicts Chinatown as dull and secretive, with residents who receive visitors with annoyance and distrust. Finally, he outlines the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of the Jewish quarter, called Jewtown, where disease spreads due to lack of food and fresh air, and children convalescing from illnesses interact with clothing destined for sale.

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Jacob Riiss How the Other Half Lives

The Italian in New York


The Italian comes in at the bottom, and in the generation that came
over the sea he stays there. In the slums he is welcomed as a tenant
who makes less trouble than the contentious Irishman or the orderloving German, that is to say: is content to live in a pig-sty and
submits to robbery at the hands of the rent-collector without
murmur.
Ordinarily he is easily enough governed by authorityalways
excepting Sunday, when he settles down to a game of cards and lets
loose all his bad passions. Like the Chinese, the Italian is a born
gambler. His soul is in the game from the moment the cards are on
the table, and very frequently his knife is in it too before the game is
ended. Every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest,
bears a hand, shut in the qualmy rooms, where meals are cooked and
clothing washed and dried besides, the livelong day. It is not unusual
to find a dozen personsmen, women, and childrenat work in a
single small room.
Chinatown
Red and yellow are the holiday colors of Chinatown as of the Bend,
but they do not lend brightness in Mott Street as around the corner in
Mulberry. Rather, they seem to descend to the level of the general
dulness, and glower at you from doors and windows, from the
telegraph pole that is the official organ of Chinatown and from the
store signs, with blank, unmeaning stare, suggesting nothing, asking
no questions, and answering none. Fifth Avenue is not duller on a
rainy day than Mott Street to one in search of excitement. Whatever is
on foot goes on behind closed doors. Stealth and secretiveness are as
much part of the Chinaman in New York as the cat-like tread of his
felt shoes. His business, as his domestic life, shuns the light, less
because there is anything to conceal than because that is the way of
the man. Perhaps the attitude of American civilization toward the
stranger, whom it invited in, has taught him that way. At any rate, the
very doorways of his offices and shops are fenced off by queer,
forbidding partitions suggestive of a continual state of siege. The
stranger who enters through the crooked approach is received with
sudden silence, a sullen stare, and an angry Vat you vant? that
breathes annoyance and distrust.
Jewtown
Penury and poverty are wedded everywhere to dirt and disease, and
Jewtown is no exception. It could not well be otherwise in such
crowds, considering especially their low intellectual status. The

managers of the Eastern Dispensary, which is in the very heart of


their district, told the whole story when they said: The diseases these
people suffer from are not due to intemperance or immorality, but to
ignorance, want of suitable food, and the foul air in which they live
and work. The homes of the Hebrew quarter are its workshops
also. Every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest,
bears a hand, shut in the qualmy rooms, where meals are cooked and
clothing washed and dried besides, the livelong day. It is not unusual
to find a dozen personsmen, women, and childrenat work in a
single small room. It has happened more than once that a child
recovering from small-pox, and in the most contagious stage of the
disease, has been found crawling among heaps of half-finished
clothing that the next day would be offered for sale on the counter of
a Broadway store.
Source: Excerpts from Jacob Riiss book How the Other Half Lives,
1890.

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