IXJACOB A. RIIS

Born in Ribe, Denmark, 1849Died in Barre, Massachusetts, 1914

There are many good citizens of the United States who can look back with pride to their Danish ancestry. Denmark, that land of low-lying, storm-swept coasts, and level plains, has bred for centuries a race of hardy, freedom-loving people. It is only natural that America should hold out to them a promise of even greater opportunity and personal liberty.

On the bleak coast of the North Sea is the little town of Ribe. There, in 1849, was born Jacob A. Riis, son of a schoolmaster and one of fourteen children. Scant were the means for the education and upbringing of so large a family; but from this humble home on the Danish seacoast came a man who, in later years, was to become famous in the new land of his adoption: famous, not because of wealth or inventive genius, but for his citizenship, and for his deeds, which left the world better than he found it.

Jacob A Riis(signature)

There were no railroads or steamboats in Ribe in those days. It was as it had been almost for centuries. And yet Ribe took pride in its history: its people were a fighting race, fighters for honor and liberty, fighters for the little of peace and security that encroaching neighbors and unfriendly Nature had permitted themto have. They had fought back the Germans in 1849, as they had fought for their homes in years before. And every year, when the wind set in from the northwest, they fought back the sea that rose up over the low beaches and flooded the land as far back as the eye could see.

With such traditions and in such environment, it is small wonder that young Jacob grew to be a healthy, normal boy charged with ambition and energy. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it was the blood that rises and fights against oppression and for the right, and never for conquest or the subjection of the weak.

It was the ambition of the father that Jacob should study for a professional career, but to the young boy, with his strong body and alert mind, the study of a trade appealed more keenly, and he was apprenticed for a year to a carpenter in the town.

But before the year was done, the boy’s ambition grew beyond the opportunities of the little town, and, with the consent of his family, he removed to Copenhagen to continue his apprenticeship under a great builder in that city. Four years were passed here, and during these years Jacob became proficient in his trade; but of even greater value were the opportunities for study which the Danish capital afforded him: study not only in books, but in men and in the observation of the life around him.

One other thing drove his ambition steadily forward. In Ribe was a fair-haired girl, the daughter of the wealthiest and most prominent citizen. Wide wasthe social and financial gulf between the young and penniless carpenter and the young girl whom he desired for his wife. To everyone but himself his hopes seemed almost ridiculous in their impossibility. He alone refused to accept defeat. If money was needed, he would make it. If Denmark could not offer him success, there was a land beyond the Atlantic that could.

He was twenty-one years old. In his pocket were forty dollars. It was not much, either in years of experience or in wealth; but he had his trade to fall back on, and, above all, he had “a pair of strong hands and stubbornness enough to do for two; also a strong belief that in a free country, free from the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as of men, things would somehow come right in the end.”

From the deck of the steamer he watched the city of New York grow large on the horizon. Ships of the world filled the blue harbor. Tall spires of churches lifted above the roofs; wharves were alive with activity. A static quality was in the air; he was filled with a spirit of adventure and limitless opportunity.

In Castle Garden, at the tip of New York, where in years past the immigrants were landed, a man was hiring laborers in an iron-works at Brady’s Bend in Pennsylvania. The pay seemed good, and Riis engaged to join the party which was being formed.

The work was hard, but Riis’s knowledge of a trade stood him in good stead, and he was put at work building houses for the employees in the foundry. Then from a clear sky came news which abruptly changedhis plans and the course of his entire life. France had declared war on Prussia, and Denmark was expected to join with France and avenge her wrongs of 1864.

Back to his memory came the love of his own country, of her flag, and of what seemed his duty there. His brain aflame with patriotism, he threw up his job and hurried to Buffalo, and from there proceeded finally to New York. He had just one cent in his pocket; he had sold his clothes and small possessions to buy his ticket.

But the Frenchmen in New York did not understand the young Dane who wanted them to send him home to fight if his country needed him; nor did those of his own countrymen whom he saw feel able to pay his transportation on this patriotic journey. Again and again young Riis offered himself. At every attempt rebuff or misfortune countered him. It was useless to try further. Reluctantly he abandoned his hope to join the French in their great struggle.

Winter was at hand. To the scantily clad, starving, and penniless young man, the great city seemed to turn a cold and forbidding shoulder. But opportunity does not come to those who wait expectant of it: it is a prize to be won by struggle, and often by privation. Opportunity is everywhere, but it is only the stalwart, indomitable spirits who seek and seize it.

Hard days followed. From New York Riis went to Jamestown, a small village in the northern part of the state, and there he spent the winter doing such trivial jobs as fell to him, glad to receive the small and irregular pay which enabled him to struggle on. For atime he worked in a Buffalo planing-mill. Summer found him working with a railroad gang outside the city. Then came the winter again, and with it work at good wages in a Buffalo shipyard. Destined to be known throughout the United States in later years for his social reforms, and his virile writings for the betterment of his fellow men, in these early days it was his knowledge of an honest trade that made it possible for him to build the foundations of future greatness.

Two years later Riis was back again in New York. Among the “want” advertisements, in a newspaper, his eye caught one which offered the position of city editor on a Long Island City weekly. The probability that a position thus advertised would be of small value was confirmed by the salary attached to it. Riis got the position; the salary was eight dollars a week, and at the end of two weeks the paper failed. Three wasted years they seemed; three years of no accomplishment.

Then came the turning. A former acquaintance, casually met, mentioned a job that was open in a news-gathering agency. “It isn’t much—ten dollars a week to start with,” he said. The brief two weeks’ experience on the Long Island City paper had given Riis a slight familiarity with the requirements. In the shadow of Grace Church he prayed for strength to do the work which he had so long and so hardly sought. Beside him his dog, his only friend in these dark days, wagged his tail in encouragement. The die was cast.

The next morning Riis presented himself at the officeof the New York News Association. The earnestness of the young man appealed to the desk editor, and despite his shabby clothes and thin, worn face, he was engaged. From that time on the path broadened and mounted steadily upward. He had begun his major life-work, a newspaper man.

A winter of hard work followed, but Riis kept his head and left no stone unturned to take every advantage of his opportunity. By day he gathered news about the city; by night he studied telegraphy. In the spring he took another step forward, and his conscientious work during the winter made it possible for him to meet the requirements of his post.

Some South Brooklyn politicians had started a weekly newspaper. They needed a reporter. Riis packed his grip and crossed the river. The new job paid fifteen dollars a week. And two weeks later he was made editor and his weekly pay was advanced to twenty-five dollars.

Then came another turning in the long, hard road. A letter from Denmark, from the little town of Ribe, from the fair-haired girl whom he had loved as a boy and for whom his love had grown through these lonesome years, told him that she loved him. A few months earlier this letter would have found him destitute, but now he was at the opening of his career. All things seemed possible. With redoubled enthusiasm he flung himself into his work.

By thrifty living Riis had saved seventy-five dollars. With this small sum and with notes for the balance, he bought the paper of which he was the editor.He was determined to succeed. “TheNewswas a big four-page sheet. Literally every word in it I wrote myself. I was my own editor, reporter, publisher and advertising agent. My pen kept two printers busy all week, and left me time to canvass for advertisements, attend meetings, and gather the news. I slept on the counter, with the edition for my pillow, in order to be up with the first gleam of daylight to skirmish for newsboys.”

Once, impressed by the fervor of a preacher, he decided to throw up editorial work and take to preaching. “No, no, Jacob,” said the preacher, “not that. We have preachers enough. What the world needs is consecrated pens.”

That determined him, finally. He would pursue the vocation he had begun, but his pen would strive for the high ideal he had set before him.

Local politics were corrupt, and Riis with his paper began a campaign for reform. He was offered bribes; politicians urged him to cater to them for the rewards they could offer. Then, when nothing else could move him, they turned to violence. One cold winter night a gang of roughs called at his office. Riis was working late. One of the roughs, chosen by the others, entered the office with a club. A minute later Riis flung him through the front window of the office into the street. That ended the trouble.

In a few months Riis had paid in full the price of the newspaper and had established it firmly on its feet. But the months of cruel work had had their effect on him. He was badly overstrained. He needed a rest.The doctors urged it. He knew they were right. With characteristic rapidity of determination, he sold the paper for five times what it had cost him, and with a snug sum in his pocket took the ship for Denmark to claim his bride.

It was no easy life in America to which he brought back his young wife. But in their small home they found in each other a peace and inspiration that made all things possible.

Eager always to try his hand at something new, Riis purchased a stereopticon and experimented with it in such small time as was left from his long day of newspaper activity and his domestic cares. It was to play a large part in his later life. “No effort to add in any way to one’s stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in this world of changes and emergencies, and Providence has a way of ranging itself on the side of the man with the strongest battalions of resources when the emergency does come.”

For a long time after the sale of the Brooklyn paper Riis had tried to get a foothold on one of the New York dailies. His persistence was again rewarded and the position of a reporter on theTribunewas opened to him. Soon after came the recognition of his earnest and conscientious work in the form of an appointment to represent his paper at Police Headquarters. It was a hard and dangerous job, which required cool nerve and indefatigable energy. But of greater importance than the money that it paid, or the honor of the advancement, was the opportunity it afforded the young reporter to study at first-hand the conditions in whichmen and women lived in the congested tenements of the city—a study which placed at his hand the knowledge which later enabled him to become the champion of the slums.

The police reporter on a newspaper gathers and writes all the news that means trouble to someone—the fires, suicides, murders, and robberies. TheTribuneoffice was in Mulberry Street, opposite Police Headquarters. All the rival newspapers had offices in the neighborhood, and among the reporters there was keen rivalry for news. Naturally, the police did not help, for to be “news” it must be discovered before it reached Police Headquarters, when all would know of it. Friendships and detective skill were important factors. Each reporter tried to be the first to get the news, write it up, and get it to his paper. There was lively competition among the reporters, for the man who got the news in print first had a “scoop” on his rivals.

Out of this busy life of the newspaper man, Riis now began to develop that interest which soon dominated his very existence; for from his daily contact with the daily life of the city slums he drew the inspiration to do his small part to better the conditions of the lives of those around him. Small as were his first efforts, there was soon inspired a veritable crusade in the soul of the Danish-American. Not as a newspaper reporter, not because he won his livelihood in the face of every difficulty, but because of his unselfish interest in his fellow men is Jacob Riis great among Americans.

One day he picked up a New York paper and sawthat the Health Department reported that during the past two weeks there had been a “trace of nitrates” in the city water. For months cholera, the dreaded scourge that comes from impure water and has, in the life of the world, killed more people than all the battles, had threatened the city. Riis investigated. The water supplying two million people must be pure. “Nitrates” were a sign of sewage contamination. The city was threatened, and no one seemed to realize the danger. The humble investigations of the newspaper reporter were to produce far-reaching results.

Riis wrote an article that day for theEvening Sun, and advised the people to boil the water before drinking it. Then, with a camera in his hand, he spent a week following to its source every stream that discharged into the Croton River. He found evidence enough: town after town discharged its sewage into the water which supplied New York City; people bathed in it; cities dumped refuse into it. With exact details, and the evidence illustrated with photographs, he returned.

The city was saved. So strong was the evidence that over a million dollars was promptly spent by the city to guard the water-supply. The real public-service life of Riis had begun.

In 1884, an awakened interest in the housing conditions in the tenement districts came to a head with the establishment of the Tenement-House Commission. It brought out the fact that the people living in the tenements were “better than the houses.” Riisworked heart and soul for the cause. Four years later the reform was assured, with the backing of such men as Dr. Felix Adler and Alfred T. White. The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed.

Now Riis turned to other conditions which cried aloud for reform. The “Bend” in Mulberry Street and the Police Lodging-Room system needed him. The “Bend” was a crowded slum that for a half-century had been the centre of vice and misery. Riis aroused the community, and in 1888 a bill was introduced in the Legislature to wipe it out bodily. To-day, a city park, a breathing-place and playground marks the site.

The Police Lodging-Room was another civic disgrace and a breeder of crime. In these vile and filthy rooms the Police Department gave night lodging to thousands of vagrants. The idea sounds well enough, but the system was wrong, and Riis realized it. In these foul quarters young men lodged with professional beggars and criminals, and learned the ways of vice; in these rooms was bred disease, physical as well as moral. Riis warned the city through his paper. Then his prophecies came true: typhus broke out in the Police Lodging-Rooms.

Slowly the force of Riis’s newspaper articles made headway. One by one the rooms were closed. The Committee on Vagrancy was formed, of which Riis was a member; and the same year Theodore Roosevelt, later to be President of the United States, was appointed Police Commissioner. That was the end. The reform was accomplished. For the deservingpoor, decent quarters were provided; the professional vagrants left the city.

In the gloom and dirt of the crowded tenements the souls of little children were shrunk and dwarfed. Riis was their crusader. Through his paper he appealed for flowers—flowers from those who came each day to the city from the country; flowers for “sad little eyes in crowded tenements, where the summer sunshine means disease and death, not play or vacation; that will close without ever having looked upon a field of daisies.”

And the flowers came. Express wagons filled with them crowded Mulberry Street; people brought them in great armfuls. Little children, slovenly women, and rough men smiled and were glad. Riis brought God’s country to Mulberry Street.

Then he turned his attention to the problem of child labor in the “East Factories” of New York. Only children over fourteen could be employed. But as there was no birth-registry, it could not be proved that thousands of little children quite evidently years under age were working there. Riis studied the problem. He found that certain teeth do not appear until the child is fourteen. He went to the factories and examined the children’s teeth. His case was proved. With such evidence a committee was appointed and a correction of the wrong was begun.

“The Public School is the corner-stone of our liberties.” The public schools of New York were crowded, the buildings were old, unsanitary, badly lighted, and many were actually dangerous fire-traps; dark basementswere used for playgrounds. There was in the whole city but one school with an outdoor playground. Worse yet, there were thousands of children who did not go to school at all, and of those who did, conditions made truants of many.

Riis enlisted for this new battle. He took photographs, and gave lectures showing slides made from his photographs, and he wrote constantly in the newspaper. Slowly the playgrounds came, and modern school-buildings more adequate to house the city’s youth.

It is an endless list of public-service activities. Instigated by this foreign-born American, the reform of the greatest American city was begun and carried far along its way. Unfit tenements were torn down, parks and playgrounds were established, the whole school-system was remodeled, the old over-crowded prison was condemned and a modern one erected, the civil courts were overhauled; there was no end to his warfare on conditions which brought death and misery to the city’s poor.

A writer for a newspaper by vocation, Jacob Riis found in his pen a strong power in his battles for reform. Throughout the latter years of his life he contributed frequent articles to magazines, and in 1890 published a book which alone will long make men remember the vital purpose of his life.How the Other Half Livestells by its title its message to the world; it is the Golden Rule reduced to modern terms.

“I hate darkness and dirt anywhere, and naturally want to let in the light ... for hating the slum,what credit belongs to me?” Unselfish, giving his all to the common cause, Jacob Riis is of the noble band of great Americans. As he lived, so he died, relatively a poor man. But poor only in worldly goods; for in the peace of his home and the love of wife and children he found a priceless wealth that gold can never buy. Many were his chances to profit by his work, but his creed was to give rather than to receive.

There were worldly honors that he received. There was the golden cross presented to him by King Christian of Denmark, and there were other recognitions to be found in the friendship and respect of the foremost citizens of the United States. But of all honors, the greatest was the affection of the thousands whom he helped a little nearer to the light, for whom he had opened windows in their souls.

No better advice has been given than this: “As to battling with the world, that is good for a young man, much better than to hang on to somebody for support. A little starvation once in a while, even, is not out of the way. We eat too much, anyhow, and when you have fought your way through a tight place, you are the better for it. I am afraid that is not always the case when you have been shoved through.”

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