Riis was not one of America's bestknown newspapermen, but unlike most of them he claims a relatively prominent place in the country's social history. He was a leader in the reform movement that began to take clear shape in America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and more than any other he is identified with the move to relieve the slum conditions oppressing the hapless immigrants in New York City. But his efforts at reform were founded on his years of covering the slums as a police reporter for two of the country's greatest newspapers, and his journalistic career deserves more attention in the standard press histories. In addition, his pioneering efforts in photo-journalism have only recently come into any significant recognition, and it may turn out to be his pictures, rather than his newspaper writings or even his books, which do the most to establish his ultimate place in communications history.
Jacob August Riis was born in the conservative old town of Ribe, Denmark, the third of fourteen children of Niels Edward and Caroline Lundholm Riis. His father was a teacher in a Latin school, but the elder Riis often wrote for a local newspaper for extra income to help feed his large family. He wanted Jacob to pursue some kind of literary career, but to his disappointment the boy apprenticed himself to a carpenter. Riis did well in school, however, and proved particularly adept at reading English, probably because he was so attracted to the works of Charles Dickens ; he also read James Fenimore Cooper .
Perhaps influenced by Dickens's tales of London squalor, Riis became concerned at an early age about conditions in his own town. As he later recalled in his autobiography, (1901), his playmates called him "Jacob the delver" because of his constant warfare with the rats nesting in the open-gutter sewer which ran underneath his house. Then, when he "could hardly have been over twelve or thirteen," he turned his attention to Rag Hall, the town's only tenement. Given one mark as a Christmas Eve present, he took it immediately to Rag Hall to share it with the poorest family there, on the condition that they should clean things up--especially the children. The bewildered recipients first checked with Mrs. Riis to see whether the gift was legitimate and then, apparently with her help, did some whitewashing and got the children "cleaned up for a season."
The youth fell in love with Elizabeth Nielsen, the daughter of a leading citizen of Ribe, and when her family rejected him as a serious suitor he precipitously set sail for America in 1870. Impetuosity and hotheadedness were lifelong traits, and in his early days in the United States they got him into some needless predicaments. When he had only $25 dollars to his name, he bought a horse for $19 dollars. Realizing that he did not know how to ride, he then had to sell the animal at a loss. Nationalistic feelings also got him...