A new exhibit at the Wood County Historical Museum is worth a visit. But be warned; you may shed some
tears.
Jacob A. Riis: How the Other Half Lives shares the writings and photographs of “America’s first
photojournalist,” the Danish immigrant who documented the severe poverty of New York’s tenements in the
1880 and ‘90s.
Originally a crime reporter for the New York Tribune, Riis was in a unique position to shed light on the
underworld of the city’s most deplorable slums. There recent immigrants — mostly Italians and Jews
seeking work in New York’s factories — lived in crowded tenements with insufficient fresh air, light,
plumbing, or food. Riis spent his first years in America jobless, homeless and hungry. He felt compelled
to tell the stories of his fellow immigrants and inform the public of their plight.
The traveling exhibit, displayed on the museum’s second floor, combines Riis’ hard-hitting descriptions
of tenement life with disturbing photographs.
The young reporter taught himself to use primitive flash photography to illuminate dark slum interiors
and their occupants. You will see men sleeping under tables in bars, children scrubbing floors, entire
families bedded down on bare floors. Images of child labor, street gangs, and homeless youths dominate
the display panels.
The heart of the exhibit is a 10-minute film that combines some of Riis’s photographs with remarks culled
from one of his many lectures to charitable societies in the city. In his speeches the reformer gave
vivid descriptions of tenement conditions while his photographs were projected by a stereopticon (an
early slide projector.)
His first book, “How the Other Half Lives,” published in 1890, was based on these early lectures. “The
Children of the Poor” followed in 1892. In 1894 then Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had become a
supporter. He and New York mayor William Strong sought Riis’ advice on housing and health legislation.
By 1899 Riis had left his newspaper job to travel around the country sharing news about housing reforms,
model tenements, settlement houses, public playgrounds, and the new public schools with large audiences.
He believed creating a healthy environment for immigrant children would ensure they became good American
citizens.
This exploration of 19th century urban poverty is the perfect foil to the museum’s other current exhibit,
on rural poverty: For Comfort and Convenience: Public Charity in Ohio by Way of the Poor Farm. Both
exhibits depict public need and the community’s response to it.
Riis was often called a “crank” for his efforts to prick the nation’s conscience on behalf of poor
immigrants in New York City. In Wood County, there may have been citizens who objected to their taxes
being spent on the poor farm. Today, some support drug testing for welfare recipients. And immigrants at
our southern border languish in tents while their fates hang in limbo, children sometimes separated from
their parents.
The film at the heart of the Jacob Riis exhibit ends with a poignant Sunday school hymn that states,
“Jesus came to save poor children like me.” Riis appealed to his audience’s sense of Christian charity
for helping the poor. But, religious or not, we can always seek ways to alleviate each other’s
suffering.
We can look beyond judgment and resentment and remind ourselves “there but for the grace of God go I.”
The problem of poverty may seem overwhelming. But thanks to reformers like Riis, solutions are always
being offered.
Will we listen to the Jacob Riises of today?
