"How the Other Half Lives"
A heart wrenching story of immigration in the US.
Jacob Riis: Famous for his novel depicting the terrible lives faced by immigrants.
Jacob Riss was a police reporter in the 1890's. He wrote a novel called "How the Other Half Lives" in this novel Riis depicts the horrible working and living conditions of immigrants to the US. Riis shows how the immigrants lived in tenement homes with as many as eight people to a house. In his time Riis took many pictures of the the sweatshops the the immigrants had to work in with no air condition during the summer and no heat during the winter. Jacob Riis explains the culture shock faced by immigrants arriving to the US at Ellis Island and the ethnic ghettos they lived in together.