Jacob Riis: Revealing “How the Other Half Lives”
Ally

Riis reviewed his decade of reform, which began in 1890, in his book A Ten Years’ War (1900). He called the two years (1895–1897) he worked actively with Roosevelt crusading against police corruption and housing conditions in New York City “the happiest by far” of his time as a reformer. When Roosevelt became governor of New York (January 1899 to January 1901), Riis encouraged him to improve the standards of state factory inspection. Roosevelt’s letters to Riis mention social worker James Bronson Reynolds and child-labor reform advocate and seasoned factory inspector Florence Kelley, both important allies in improving factory inspection at the state and national levels.

In the early 1900s, tuberculosis was the second leading cause of death in New York City, disproportionately affecting the urban poor. For five years, Riis incessantly lobbied to build a seaside hospital for tubercular children on land in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York. Louise Carnegie, wife of New York industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, read Riis’s 1906 article about the plight of these ill children and his campaign to raise funds and sent Riis a warm note and a $10,000 check. The project, however, met continued resistance from private developers and politicians. After five years without progress, Andrew Carnegie wrote Riis this brusque note: “Mrs. Carnegie . . . has made a contribution and before more is askt [sic] we should hav [sic] a statement of the present conditions of the institution, especially a list of subscribers and amounts given so far.” Though Riis’s initial efforts for a facility were unsuccessful, New York’s first public hospital for treatment of tuberculosis opened on Staten Island in 1913.

In 1901, the year that both Jacob Riis and Booker T. Washington published important autobiographies (The Making of an American and Up From Slavery), Washington suggested that Riis accompany Vice President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip South to visit Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The trip was tentatively set for November but was cancelled when President William McKinley was assassinated in September, unexpectedly launching Roosevelt into the presidency. The trio remained in touch. Shortly after taking office, Roosevelt famously welcomed the African American leader to dinner at the White House. Riis guided Washington on a tour of the Lower East Side in 1904, and finally visited Tuskegee himself in 1905, writing home enthusiastically to his wife about the experience.

Riis’s longstanding friendship with Roosevelt placed the reformer among those in the president’s inner circle. The magazine of political satire and humor, Puck, parodied the reaction of Roosevelt’s allies, cabinet members, and White House guests to the end of his presidency. In the image above, President Theodore Roosevelt stands at the center with his successor William H. Taft and a gathering of his “officers.” Riis appears as a colonial army officer with a handkerchief to his eyes (second from the left), while Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte is Napoleon, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute founder Booker T. Washington stands in the doorway, and naturalist John Burroughs towers in frontier costume. Everyone, except Roosevelt, is crying.