Muckrakers and Reform Efforts

Problem:Overcrowded, unsanitary and unsafe housing and
working conditions.

Jacob Riis, Five
Cents Lodging,
Bayard Street, c.
1889

“There is no mistaking it: we are in Jewtown. It is said that
nowhere in the world are so many people crowded together on
a square mile as here….yet the sign “To Let" is the rarest of
all….Here is one (building) seven stories high. The sanitary
policeman whose beat this is will tell you that it contains
thirty-six families, but the term has a widely different meaning
here….In this house, where a case of small-pox was reported,
there were fifty-eight babies and thirty-eight children that were
over five years of age. In Essex Street two small rooms in a
six-story tenement were made to hold a "family" of father and
mother, twelve children, and six boarders….These are samples
of the packing of the population that has run up the record here
to the rate of three hundred and thirty thousand per square
mile.” –
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890 Source:
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/chap10.html

Muckrakers:- Jacob Riis, photographer and author of

Howthe Other Half Lives

Muckrakers and Reform Efforts

- Lewis Hine, photographer

Reforms:
- Laws were passed to:
• clean the streets
• limit child labor
• provide safer working conditions

- Charities were developed to help the poor.

• Hull House, YMCA, YWCA, Salvation Army