“How the Other Half Lives: The Plight of the Cities”
Christine Colihan and Amy Vitcusky
Lesson Description: This lesson will focus on the problems in American cities
at the turn of the 20th century and how muckrakers (i.e. Jacob Riis) exposed
the problems to the American public through photos and articles.
Grade: This lesson is designed for an 11th grade United States History
Course
Time Required: This lesson can be completed in a 90 minute block and
possibly one more 45 minute period.
Benchmarks Addressed:
1. History Standard Two: 9-12b: Students will examine and analyze primary
and secondary sources. This standard will be addressed by having students
examine the photographs taken by Jacob Riis and reading an excerpt taken
from “How the Other Half Lives”
Essential Question: How do you expose the American public to conditions in
society that need to be addressed by the United States government or
other organizations?
Enduring Understanding: Students will understand that muckrakers of the
Progressive Era (and even reformers of today) used different tactics to
allow the American public to see the problems in society. The tactics
focused on in this lesson are the use of photographs to expose the problems
as well as articles published in widely read magazines or complete books.
Materials:
1. Photographs by Jacob Riis (powerpoint presentation)
2. Photographs by Jacob Riis (including captions) (powerpoint
presentation part II)
3. Assignment sheet for muckraking article (Handout 1)
4. Facts sheet of city conditions to use when writing article (Handout 2)
5. “How the Other Half Lives” –excerpt from Jacob Riis
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html
Historical Literacy Project Lesson Three/Progressive Era
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Procedures:
1. Students will be given a short biography on muckraker, Jacob Riisteacher should lead a discussion as to why Riis becomes a muckraker
concerned with the plight of the cities (i.e. from an immigrant family)
2. In pairs students will look at 7 photos taken by Jacob Riis that were
used to expose Americans to the plight of the cities. Each pair will
come up with a caption that encompasses what is going on in the
picture. (1st powerpoint)
3. The class will come back together and as a whole analyze each picture
and ask pairs for their captions with explanations as to why they
picked them. After discussing two or three student captions, the
teacher should use the powerpoint containing photos with captions and
lead a discussion concerning if the captions Riis and the students
chose are similar or different and what they think Riis was trying to
convey in the photos and captions.
4. Students should then be given a fact sheet that contains information
on the cities during this time period, the facts should be reviewed
with the class so they know what they are looking at.
5. Students should then create their own muckraking article as if they
are Jacob Riis and have just taken these photos and would like to
expose the American public to the problems of the cities. The article
should be no less then 500 words, cite facts from fact sheet, and
refer to at least one or two photos they saw.
6. After collecting their articles and to wrap up to this activity,
students should read an excerpt from Riis’s book “How the Other Half
Lives” There are suggested chapters to read but the website is
provided if the teacher would like to use another excerpt. Excerpts
suggested are : Chapter 5- The Italian in New York and Chapter 15:
The Problem of the Children http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html
Debrief:
After students have been given a chance to write their article and read the
excerpt from Riis, a class discussion should be had where you ask for
similarities and differences in what the students wrote and what Riis wrote
ie. Ask students what facts they used and why, what Riis used why might
they be different etc.
Historical Literacy Project Lesson Three/Progressive Era
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Assessment:
The assessment is the muckraking article where students will be using many
of the tools the muckrakers used i.e. facts, photos and anything else they
might think of (quotes). After doing this activity students will understand
that muckrakers didn’t just sit down and write an article, they had to
research first and then expose the problems to the American public. Once
the problems were exposed reform could begin.
Historical Literacy Project Lesson Three/Progressive Era
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Handout 1
You’re the Muckraker
Directions: - Using the information obtained from Jacob Riis’s
pictures and fact page, write your own muckraking article about
the problems in the city. Include specific information taken from
the pictures and fact page in your article. Your article should be
dated appropriately with this time period.
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Historical Literacy Project Lesson Three/Progressive Era
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Handout 2
Facts taken from Jacon Riis’s “How The Other Half Lives”
“The first means that in a population of a million and a half, very nearly, if
not quite, half a million persons were driven, or chose, to beg for food, or to
accept it in charity at some period of the eight years, if not during the
whole of it.”
“It is estimated that New York spends in public and private charity every
year a round $8,000,000.”
“A volume might be written about the tricks of the professional beggar, and
the uses to which he turns the tenement in his trade. The Boston "widow"
whose husband turned up alive and well after she had buried him seventeen
times with tears and lamentation, and made the public pay for the weekly
funerals, is not without representatives in New York.”
“The 135,595 families inhabited no fewer than 31,000
different tenements. I say tenements advisedly, though the
society calls them buildings, because at least ninety-nine per
cent. were found in the big barracks, the rest in shanties
scattered here and there, and now and then a fraud or an
exceptional case of distress in a dwelling-house of better
class.”
“Of 508 babies received at the Randall's Island Hospital last
year 333 died, 65.55 per cent. But of the 508 only 170 were
picked up in the streets, and among these the mortality was
much greater, probably nearer ninety per cent.”
“Often they come half dead from exposure. One live baby came in a little
pine coffin, which a policeman found an inhuman wretch trying to bury in an
up-town lot. But many do not live to be officially registered as a charge upon
the county. Seventy-two dead babies were picked up in the streets last
year.”
Historical Literacy Project Lesson Three/Progressive Era
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“Most of the foundlings come from the East Side, where they are left by
young mothers without wedding-rings or other name than their own to
bestow upon the baby, returning from the island hospital to face an unpitying
world with the evidence of their shame.”
“To-day three-fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the
nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending everincreasing multitudes to crowd them. The fifteen thousand tenant houses
that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled
into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons
call them home.”
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Jacob Riis – The Immigrant
Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States from
Denmark in 1870. After years of extreme poverty and
hardship he finally found employment as a police
reporter for the New York Tribune in 1877. In the 1880s
his work gravitated towards reform and he worked with
other New York reformers then crusading for better
living conditions for the thousands of immigrants
flocking to New York in search of new opportunities.
His most popular work, How The Other Half Lives,
became a pivotal work that precipitated much needed
reforms and made him famous.Jacob Riis's
photography, taken up to help him document the plight
of the poor, made him an important figure in the history
of documentary photography.
Jacob Riis – The Muckraker
• Jacob Riis employed a blend of reporting, reform and
photography that made him a unique legend in all
three fields. Theodore Roosevelt held Riis in very
high esteem offering him positions of power and
influence in his administration and calling him, "the
most useful citizen of New York". Instead Riis
continued his creative work, producing books on the
plight of poor children , immigrants and tenement
dwellers. He died in 1914.
Directions for Jacob Riis
Photographs
• Students will analyze the photographs and
then create titles for each of the
photographs.
• There are 7 photographs to title.
• The students should write their titles on a
piece of paper.
Photograph 1
Photograph 2
Photograph 3
Photograph 4
Photograph 5
Photograph 6
Photograph 7
Part Two
Students will look at the same 7
photographs and compare their
titles with Jacob Riis titles.
Bandit’s Roost
Playground
One of the four peddlers who slept in the cellar
of 11 Ludlow Street Rear - 1892
5 cents a spot
Dens of Death
$1 a Month
Homeless Children