In class: review of the colon sheet. Discussion of How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis
Handout: novel Maggie, Girl of the Street
This short novel is a fictional parallel to Riis' study of the people of lived in the Lower East Side of New York during the last quarter of the 19th century. You will have two in-class days for the reading; as well, this is your homework. What are you doing with this text? For each of the 21 short chapters, you will write a brief synopsis (100 words ) Frame these around the literary elements: character, plot, tone, theme, dialogue, setting and figurative language devices, peppering your responses with specific works from the reading. I would suggest you underline words or phrases in the chapter as your read. By the time you finish, you should have addressed all of these. Naturally, as much of this will be accomplished in class, it is fine to hand write. Please label each chapter. This is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday.
If you loose your copy, the full text is available on line.
The setting is in the mid-nineteenth century; New York when Industrial Revolution has struck the northern states of America. The author describes women’s suffrage in living in this period whether or not they were married, rich, or poor. Women with large income husband were left at home to keep the house because her husband was busy doing businesses outside. He rarely has time to care for his family. The poor working girls had to live hard lives which were affected by Industrial Revolution.
ReplyDeleteThe author stresses the working and living condition of the working girls. They could barely satisfy their basic needs. They had to share a small, dirty, stuffy room; they never had a properly cooked and nutritious food. In addition, their clothes were of low quality and torn. Their workplace was a black-looking where hundreds of girls had to stand working more hours than need and receiving low wages compared to men. The machinery caused some to go deaf. The girls working were under 18 and had to lie about their age to keep their place on the job. Even though the girls were young in the age, they were somewhat like adults in appearance and their responsibilities in their family. (210) (Aaron)
A citizen’s movement in the organization broad of health led to the adoption of the “Tenement-House Act” of 1867. The tenements were developed, to create homes for many children and their families in New York City. A lot of work went into building these tenements; eventually the tenements became over populated. There were a lot of crimes and violence in the regions where the tenements were built. The brick buildings were at least four to six stories high, occupying at least three or more families in one living space.
ReplyDeleteChurches in 1879, Characterized the younger criminals as victims of low social conditions of life and unhealthy over crowded lodgings. Corruption was continually increasing, that was on of the curses of the tenements. There were no air ventilation and the staircase was often too dark. The tenements were unclean and filthy; this was where most families had to live because they were poor.
Chapter 2 The awakening
Arieanna Burroughs
ReplyDeleteMrs. Parker
6 February 2012
According this Chapter IX. Chinatown, Chinamen were seen as bad people. They way that they chose to live their lives were seen as an opposition to other who lived their lives differently. They lack the “ essential qualities for appreciating the gentle teachings of a faith whose motive and unselfish spirit are alike beyond its grasp.” Because of this is it believed that the Chinamen eventually adopted Christianity. Chinatown was seen “ as a spectacle is disappointing.” The families lived in tenement like houses ; which were crowded and most likely unsanitary. Everything that happens in Chinatown is behind closed doors. They feel that it is more safe to keep everything to themselves instead of searching for help, “ Stealth and secretiveness are as much part of the Chinaman in New York as the cat - like tread of his felt shoes.” This made it easier for crimes to be done and not get caught.
Young females were being taken away and put into a “ laundry”, this is cruelty to children. One girl who told her story about being put into a laundry was thirteen years old. She was abandoned by her father and was “ discharged from an English Avenue store , where she was employed as a cash girl, and, being afraid to tell her mother.” She wandered around end became a part of the Chinese Laundry. She wasn’t in the laundry for long until she was sent home to live with her mother. In Chinatown when a murder takes place , around that time there were no severe punishments for just the murderer, the victim was also punished. “ I have a very vivid recollection of , where the murderer stabbed his victim ( both Chinamen, of course) in the back with a meat knife, plunging it in to the hilt no less than seventeen times, arouses the popular prejudice to a suspicion that it was “ ordered”, only the suspected themselves are to blame, for they appear to rise up as one man to shield the criminal.” Chinese people were being viewed as worthless people and there is absolutely no point of them being in this world. “ The Chinese people are in no sense a desirable element of the population, that they serve no useful purpose here, whatever they may have done elsewhere in other days, yet to this it is a sufficient answer that they are here, and that, having let them in , we must make the best of it."
Amanda Saunders
ReplyDeleteMs. Parker
Jacob Rii’s Intro
7 February 2012
During the time period of 1890 the wealthy had no sympathy for the poor; drowning in filth below them. Only until violence and the horrors the slums faced did the wealthy see the ignorance of their old ways. Rii’s observes the nurseries of the crime from operations of the mob in New York City that soon became rapid with crime and over population. People soon swelled into the thirty seven thousand tenements, housing over twelve hundred thousand. A loop hole that was sought to solve the struggling overfilling tenements was rapid transit to the suburbs. But with no relief Rii’s watches as the wealthy swim in glory and the poor drown in their own sewage. The sanitation of the slums can be seen with children playing in open sewers, and dead corpses littering the streets have led to the downfall of the people. Jobs started going to ex con eliminating jobs; putting forty thousand on the streets. Beggars roaming and soon sucking dry charities. As well as drunks and criminals run rampant through the streets. Rii further explains how tenement owners horribly leave the tenement houses, not fixing much needed repairs or any sense of safety. “The complaint was universal among the tenements were entirely uncared for and the only answer to their requests to have the place put in order necessary improvements was to pay their rent or leave.”
“How the love of God shall be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?” a warning said by a Brooklyn builder. The Builders words giving more meaning to Jacob Rii’s literature, explain how the wealthy can truly see the horrors in beauty in life without suffering. The wealthy are only seeing their own greed instead of the love of god and his creatures. The Builders words are trying to warn the wealthy to see their mistake of ignoring the slums, and poor before it grows to an uncontrollable epidemic. The wealthy unfortunately flee from commitment of their part of the destruction. As many worlers,citizens, and muckrakers report the downfall of the cities can be mostly blamed for the downfall of the city. Connecting and relating back to Jacob Rii’s “How the Other Half lives”. Jacob Rii exposes the suffering and filth of the cities slum from the upper half’s abandonment. Jacob Rii’s photography and words fill the ears of the upper half; finally exposing them truly to the horrors and gruesome living conditions the poor survive through day by day.
Hannah Klaver
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XVII. The Street Arab
7 February 2012
Street Arabs are children who have been crowded out of the tenements and thus find refuge in the streets. They don’t acknowledge any authority and don’t owe allegiance to anybody or anything. In the winter, young boys crowd around vent-holes that let out the heat and steam from the underground press-rooms of the newspapers for warmth. In the summer they play craps and 7-11 on the curb for their hard-earned pennies. They are alert to any sense of danger, especially of the police, sleeping with one eye open ready to make an escape through an open door or a hidden turn or runway, knowing secret passages and short cuts no one else has ever found. They are found all over the city. They scout around looking for any chance of picking up
a living in the daytime and turn in anywhere convenient at night. A warm weather truck, an out-house, or a dug-out in a hay-barge. The fact of the matter is, that, most left home in the first place because they were hungry. Others were orphaned. Either way, they were overlooked by the Society and shunned to the hardships of the street.
There is some hope for these lost children. Lodging houses. Specifically, the Duane Street lodging house for newsboys. Boys can come and go as they please. They aren’t restrained when it comes to their independence. Six cents for a bed, six for a breakfast of bread and coffee, and then six for a supper of pork and beans, as much as one can eat. “The Society maintains five of these boys’ lodging houses, and one for girls, in the city. The Duane Street Lodging House alone has sheltered since its foundation in 1855 nearly a quarter of a million different boys...” Twelve thousand, one hundred fifty-three boys and girls were sheltered and taught last year in all of the lodging-houses combined. Besides these, the Society established and operated twenty-one industrial schools in the tenement districts. These are for children of the poor who can’t find room in the city’s school-houses, or they are too ragged to even go there. There were two free reading-rooms and then a dressmaking and typewriting school along with a laundry where girls were instructed. By itself, the Italian school in Leonard Street had an average attendance of more than six hundred pupils. The daily average attendance was 4,105. Among these were 1,132 children of drunken parents, and 416 found begging on the street. “From the lodging-houses and the schools are drawn the battalions of young emigrants that go every year to homes in the Far West, to grow up self supporting men and women...”
Ashley Lawson
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“Working Girls of New York” Response
7 February 2012
Women were treated much differently and had fewer advantages in the work force than men. Minimum wages were set for men but not women. “Men’s wages cannot fall below a limit upon which they can exist, but a woman’s wages have no limit.” Unfair treatment such as this led to the low wages of women in the work force. It made it very difficult for these women to provide for themselves or their family. Sometimes they couldn’t find work and couldn’t “live without assistance…without depriving [themselves] of real necessities…it is inevitable that they must in many instances resort to evil.” The only job a woman could find to make money was prostitution, and in one case, a lady committed suicide, “preferring death to dishonor.” When women actually did have an honest job, their wages were low to begin with, but after investigations, it was found that “wages averaging from $2 to $4.50 a week were reduced by excessive fines.” Women were being fined for the simplest things, and in some instances the women were obeying the law. “One of the causes for fine in a certain large store was sitting down…The law requiring seats for saleswoman, generally ignored, was obeyed faithfully in this establishment. The seats were there, but the girls were fined when found using them.” Another factor that caused women to have less money was the fact that they more often than not, had to buy their own materials and equipment for work; anything as far as buying their own aprons and sewing machines. “Cash-girls receiving $1.85 a week for work that at certain seasons lengthened their day to sixteen hours were sometimes required to pay for their aprons…[needle-women] had to find their own thread and pay for their own machines out of their wages.” Child labor was also a major problem during this time. Girls younger than fourteen worked in the factories and had to lie about their age in order to keep the job and provide for their families. Officials such as the Women’s Investigating Committee and the factory inspector attempted to uphold the laws as far as child labor, but observing the number of factories, this was considered a difficult task. “…the very number of factories in New York is guessed at as I the neighborhood of twelve thousand. Up till this summer, a single inspector was charged with the duty of keeping the run of them all, and of seeing to it that the law was respected by the owners.” The Working Girls of New York suffered many unfair treatments, worked in horrible conditions, and lived in horrifying tenements, which inevitably and unfortunately led to starvation and death.
Briana Jones
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Chapter IX. Chinatown
7 February 2012
In chapter IX it speaks of an area in New York known as Chinatown. This area is for the poor immigrants that are chinese. As an opinion of an individual " chinaman will remain abortive in this generation" and figures "there is nothing strong about him, except his passions/ when aroused." The chinese trys to adopt mostly everything of the American culture to fit in, so they should not be judged so harsh since they have not done nothing to dishonor their race yet. An opinion about this area is "chinatown as a spectacle is disappointing." The colors that were outside in this neighborhood was red and yellow as their holiday colors. The American civilization's attitude toward these strangers that they invited in has made them this way. Chinatown had their style as putting their hands into their pockets and everyone there followed this no more what they wore or how they looked. There were not many chinese women in this neighborhood. The chinese were men that were merchants with white women as their wife. Chinatown was overwhelmed by a drug called opium and there were tragic results from the people using it. For it was " Mott street gives up its victims only to the charity hospital or the Potter's field." The wives were young doing this drug and they were only awared of this because no one care about it. It became part of life so it tooken as doing what is right and the way of life because they knew nothing else. The drug was a powerful way into having authority eating out your palm because they also did it too. The chinese people were very neat and clean. Their distinctive field was laundry, therefore they were not filthy. The young wives were not teenagers and most of had stories to tell about their drug use. They even died and the priest came the all the time hearding the same story for all, no matter who they were. There were many cases for children being abused in Chinatown. The children that were in this situtation had the history of not having a family with adoration. The telegraph was their way of communication and the Chinaman used it to do secretive things. The Chinaman would rather gamble than eat as the police saidwith their evidences. The chinese social and political existence was from continous and never ending plotting and counter- plotting. In the chinese colony; there were major crimes occurring that were worst than the Italians. The chinese people were known for not wanting to be bothered and be left alone. Chinatown had a chance to recover from forms of dissipation but for other reasons for victims they only died moral, mental, and physical death.
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ReplyDeleteMariah Gonzalez
ReplyDeleteMs. Parker
The Awakening: 10 facts, 10 opinions
7 February 20120
10 Facts:
1.)“A citizens’ movement resulted in the organization of a Board of Health and the adoption of the “Tenement- House Act” of 1867, the first step toward remedial legislation.”
2.)“…but the cholera first, and next a scourge of small – pox, delayed the work…”
3.)“In that year the Board ordered the cutting of more than forty-six thousand windows in interior rooms, chiefly for ventilation…”
4.)“Air-shafts were unknown.”
5.)“Already it taxed the city heavily for the support of its jails and charities.”
6.)“They cannot be summarily torn down, though in extreme causes the authorities can order them cleared.”
7.)“To-day, what is a tenement? The law defines it as a house “occupied by three or more families, living independently and doing their cooking on the premises; or by more than two families on a floor, so living and cooking and having a common right in the halls, stairways, yards, etc.””
8.)“…when the sanitary police report counting 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby Street house, one of twins, built together.”
9.)“Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a hundred and fifty “lodgers” sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings.”
10.)“The children in the other, if I am not mistaken, numbered 89, a total of 180 for two tenements!”
10 Opinions:
1.)“…pricked the conscience of the community into action soon.”
2.)“Official reports, read in the churches in 1879, characterized the younger criminals as victims of low social conditions of life and unhealthy, overcrowded lodgings, brought up in "an atmosphere of actual darkness, moral and physical."”
3.)“"If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their tenements", "it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the gutters.””
4.)“”The new tenements, that have been recently built, have been usually as badly planned as the old, with dark and unhealthy rooms, often over wet cellars, where extreme overcrowding is permitted.””
5.)“The outrageous over-crowding, too, remains.”
6.)“It is one of the curses of the tenement-house system that the worst houses exercise a leveling influence upon all the rest, just as one bad boy in a school-room will spoil the whole class.”
7.)“It is one of the ways the evil that was “the result of forgetfulness of the poor” has of avenging itself.”
8.)“And the tenements will exist in New York forever.”
9.)“The picture is nearly as true today as then years ago, and will be for a long time to come.”
10.)“The Sanitarians were following up an evil that grew faster than they went; like a fire, it could only be headed off, not chased, with success.”
*2012 whoops.
DeleteMariah Gonzalez
ReplyDeleteMs. Parker
The Awakening: 10 facts, 10 opinions
7 February 2012
Response:
In chapter two of, How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis, Riis talks about the severity of the tenements in which the lower class is forced to live in. With “the dread of advancing cholera” and the “scourge of small-pox” worrying New York City, the “organization of a Board of Health and the adoption of the “Tenement- House Act” of 1867” is created. With the new Board of Health and Tenement-House Act, New York City begins to attempt to reform the slums they have begun to notice. While these minor reforms included “cutting more than forty- six thousand windows in interior rooms” for ventilation, since there were no air vents, the small changes the Board of Health made did not go far. Barely helping improve the living arrangements of the poor, a group known as the Sanitarians joined the cause. Although they tried to better the tenements they were “following up an evil that grew faster than they went; like a fire, it could only be headed off, not chased, with success.” No matter how much they tried to reform the terrible and downtrodden living conditions that became associated with the slums, the Sanitarians were chasing an “evil” that could only successfully held off, but never fully beaten. Despite the progress the group made in creating new tenements, the buildings were still unsuccessful in their attempt in trying to destroy the negativity that came with the older ones. “The new tenements, that have been recently built, have been usually as badly planned as the old, with dark and unhealthy rooms, often over wet cellars, where extreme overcrowding is permitted.” Although the people of New York were determined to get rid of the “evil” that lurked within the dirty conditions of the tenements, their reforms did not bring much change, bringing fourth the idea that “the tenements will exist in New York forever.”
The author opens with the importance tenement use to have upon the wealthy. Tenement houses had once been around; but not for the very purpose they were held during immigration. The tenement houses were once “infamous ever after in our city’s history”. It was the movement of immigration and the war of 1812 that grew the city “of less than a hundred thousand to harbor half a million souls”. Many that once lived in their “comfortable dwellings” on “fashionable streets” were now moving into different areas because their area was being handed over to real-estate agents and boarding house keepers. “In it’s beginning, the tenant-house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose small earnings limited their expenses”. The author stresses how once industrialization grew the “necessities of the poor became the opportunity of their wealthier neighbors”. Soon the old houses(tenements) now became of more value. The one room was cut into several different rooms “without regard to light or ventilation”. This was not a health issue to the wealthy, this was about the money. The author then goes on to describe the other conditions of the tenements.
ReplyDeleteAs the economy grew so did the population. Many more immigrants entered the United States, which meant many more homes had to be built. Many immigrants came to America without any money; leaving them homeless in the unsanitary streets on tenants. Even though more tenants were built, the size of the room grew smaller and smaller. The author stresses that in “one room 12 x 12 with five families living in it, compromising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition, screen, chair or table” the rent was always maintained. As stated in the text “ It was the rent the owner was after; nothing was said in the contract about either the safety or the comfort of the tenants”.
Meghan Rebholz
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“A Raid on the Stale-Beer Dives” Response
7 February 2012
Life had significant differences between the lives of the rich and the poor during this time. In order for the poor to cope with the unfortunate events they encountered, they turned to alcohol. Groups of the lower class would get together at night and find an enclosed cellar or alley where they could drink unlicensed beer together. These areas were known as “the Bends”, which were usually very filthy and had an unbearable stench. The poor would sit around a keg and serve beer to one another. In order to get into one of these the people had to pay a certain amount to get in. The police and patrolmen went out at night to break these groups up and arrest those participating. These raids were stale-beer dives. The police were quite disgusted by the lives lived by poor individuals. They constantly referred to them as hags, beggars or tramps. Once they discovered “the Bends” the individuals were arrested and put into cells for a night, then brought to court to figure out their final verdict. Most were sentenced to six months “on the island”.
The poor were able to find jobs in saloons occasionally in the winter time. The barkeepers would permit them to take a seat about the stove and by shivering they would gain sympathy from customers and they would come into the saloon. This helped the hosts a lot with their business. The only catch for the poor was that they had to remain awake for the whole time while sitting there. If they didn’t they would be kicked out of the bar and fired from the job. In order for this to definitely work, new groups of poor people were sent in every hour.
The way of life for the poor was frowned upon by others in higher social classes. They saw it as the very bottom of life. No one could possibly stoop any lower than how they were living. One of Riis friends, the Sergeant, once said, “to the devil or the dives, same thing,”. That shows just how horrible others thought the poor’s life style was.
Ty Adams
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Riis reading
2012 February 7
Especially during the Gilded Age of America, many cases of immigration sprung up around the east coast. Immigrants came directly from specific European countries. Places that are in direct linear correlation with Europe such as NY were hit with huge outbreaks of overcrowding. The city’s population once stood at a mere 100,000 citizens, and over the course of five years, turned into about half a million people. In order to make up for all these un-housed immigrants, the government created “tenant housing” which were mass created buildings, made to theoretically barely fit tons of people. According to many of the people who lived in these buildings, the living started off nice. People went to their daily low-class jobs working in shops, and other places on the poorer side of town. The problem was, was that the numbers of people who kept coming to areas of Manhattan, didn’t stop. The overcrowding in tenement buildings led to may complaints by the tenants claiming that, “The areas were very small…almost comparable to the size of a cubby-hole…” Also people said that the housing became very filthy and unattended to by the city. On top of the overcrowding and un-cleanliness, there was the major issue of disease. During this era, not everyone had “healthcare”, and that was a major problem. Epidemics started to break out and things like the swine spread from tenement to tenement causing deaths upon deaths. Many young children, and mothers were very susceptible to these epidemics. The reading also said, “Many poor people also began to live down in cellars…” Despite the cold temperatures and disgusting rodents, poor immigrants and citizens had to make do and survive. Sadly, until 1867, owners of swine filled buildings, and any other unsafe tenement for that matter, were prohibited from operating those housing units. A lot of deaths could’ve been prevented during this era if the government wasn’t so selfish.
Otchych, Julie
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Jewtown
8 February 2012
Jewtown is the tenth chapter of How the Other Half Lives. The Hebrew quarter is crowded with tenements and clothing shop. One can immediately tell where he is by the way people dress and talk. Men wore “queer skull caps…and outlandish long-skirted kaftan[s].” The streets are filled with people and the buildings could contain up to 36 families. “Even the alley is crowded…” The hallways and cellars are not clean. The people who live there work the hardest. Everyone in the family lends a hand, even the younger children. “…Freedom could only be bought by gold…” and “money [was] their God.” There are Polish and Russian Jews that would starve themselves to save even a little bit of money. There was extreme poverty everywhere. The homes doubled as workshops. They “worked at high pressure from earliest dawn till mind and muscle gave out together.” They had trouble with the police. They “are ready to fight for [their] rights, or what [they] consider [their] rights…” The younger people of Jewtown like to dance. The dances sometimes turn into fights that go on until someone is hurt. There are a few missions in the district. A majority of the children go to public schools. “They can count, and correctly, almost before they can talk.” Bargain days at the “Pig-Market, which does not sell pork, are Thursday and Friday. The prices are ridiculously low. “The endless panorama of the tenements, rows upon rows, between stony streets, stretches to the north, to the south, and to the west as far as the eye reaches.”