Biography of: Jacob A. Riis
Author: Ace Carpenter
Timeline
Leadership Style
Political Philosophy
Timeline
Jacob A. Riis, born in Ribe, Denmark, was the first reformer to express his unhappiness of poor living conditions to the wide public. His experience with writing and photography brought an unprecedented power to his message. It all started in 1870 when Riis arrived in New York as a Danish Immigrant and like many others, poor and unskilled. He often spent nights in lodging houses supplied by the police, until 1877, when he found a job as a police reporter for the Tribune. He reported there for eleven years, and then left to report for the Evening Sun. Their headquarters were located on Mulberry Street which was in the heart of the lower east side slum district. It was here that he became aware of the squalid living conditions of the poor people all around. As Jacob became more and more familiar with the neighborhood's, the more these conditions bothered him. Jacob started taking action by writing and lecturing to the public about how bad living conditions were for some people. His message was that the poor were victims of their fate rather than makers of it. This was an emerging concept of social reformers at that time. Although his rhetorical skills were strong, Jacob was having a hard time communicating to the public with that elemental shock that he was looking for. It was until 1877, with the invention of flash photography, that Jacob's message began to take hold. Pictures rather than words was what Jacob needed to truly portray his message to the media as well as the public. This powerful new resource allowed Jacob to take pictures in the darkest tenements of the slums. As Jacob took more and more pictures of the horrors of slum life, the shift of the public's opinion was on his side. The public began to accept and understand that these living conditions must not go on. His visual evidence and slide shows gave Jacob the element of effect that was needed to sway his audience. Other newspapers even reported by saying that this man's viewers were heard moaning and even fainting at the photographs he had taken. Although his audience had never experienced the slum life, they could understand the severe and intolerable threat that it had to their human dignity. You could say that in a way Jacob manipulated his audience, like other leaders do, by setting up his subjects in a way to heighten the impact of the message he was portraying. He even went as far as to write a book, How the Other Half Lives (1890) to win over his audience. According to a website about Jacob, his reputation continued to grow nationally and was even the major influence in the launching of housing reforms across the nation. He also improved sanitary conditions, requested more schools for children, and built many parks and playgrounds.
Leadership Style
Political Philosophy
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