how the other half livesjacob a riis
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Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914) was the first of what would become known as "muckrakers"-people who exposed government, corporate and social abuses. Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark and came over to New York in 1870 among thousands of poor unskilled Danish. Though life was hard at first and finding jobs were difficult, Riis eventually managed to land a job as a police reporter for the Tribune in 1877. Police headquarters were located in the center of the Lower East Side slums district on Mulberry Street. Because of this, Riis was exposed to the kind of conditions new immigrants were living in. Riis eventually used his journalistic skills to convey to the public his disgust of the kind of squalor these people were living in. He would lecture in halls, stressing his belief that the poor were victims of circumstance rather than makers of their fate. The introduction of flash photography in 1887 made Riis' lectures all the more powerful and moving because the public could not only hear about the conditions, but also see them. All of these elements eventually rolled into one published piece of literature, How the Other Half Lives in 1890...