How the Other Half Lives

 “The greed of capital that wrought the evil must itself undo it, as far as it can now be undone.”

This sentence encapsulates both Riis’s diagnosis of the tenement problem and his proposed solution. On one hand, it was the “greed of capital” that created the tenements. Real-estate speculators and heartless landlords prioritized maximum profits by cramming as many families into the smallest possible lodgings and then charging exorbitant rent. On the other hand, later in the book Riis cites examples of enlightened owners who have seen reasonable returns on their investment because (not in spite) of their humane treatment of tenants. An appeal to capital investment, therefore, supported by Christian principles, constitutes the best hope for landlord and tenant alike.

“The bullet-proof shutters, the stacks of hand-grenades, and the Gatling guns of the Sub-Treasury are tacit admissions of the fact and of the quality of the mercy expected. The tenements to-day are New York, harboring three-fourths of its population. When another generation shall have doubled the census of our city, and to that vast army of workers, held captive by poverty, the very name of home shall be as a bitter mockery, what will the harvest be?”

This is the final passage of Chapter 2. It is one of the earliest and strongest expressions of alarm, designed to rouse the city’s wealthy inhabitants from their complacency and reveal the danger of further neglect. Powerful institutions already arm themselves against the prospect of an angry mob. Here Riis argues for the urgency of addressing the conditions that give rise to such mobs, particularly when New York’s impoverished communities already know and feel the disdain of the wealthier communities. By describing the tenements as synonymous with New York itself, Riis advances his argument for immediate and substantial reform of existing buildings, coupled with the intelligent and humane construction of new ones, rather than long-term projects designed to replace the entire