PEDIATRICS Vol. 54 No. 2 August 1974, pp. 200
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JACOB A. RIIS ON CHILDREN LIVING IN TENEMENTS (1892)

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914), a Danish-American journalist and social reformer, shocked the American conscience in his book How the Other Half Lives (1890), by his exposé of the horrors of New York City slums and the abuses of lower-class urban life. The following quotation from his book, The Children of the Poor (1892) unfortunately is still applicable today-82 years later!

The tenement and the saloon, with the street that does not always divide them, form the environment that is to make or unmake the child. The influence of each of the three is bad. Together they have power to overcome the strongest resistance. But the child born under their evil spell has none such to offer. The testimony of all to whom has fallen the task of undoing as much of the harm done by them as may be, from the priest of the parish school to the chaplain of the penitentiary, agrees upon this point, that even the tough, with all his desperation, is weak rather than vicious. He promises well, he even means well; he is as downright sincere in his repentance as he was in his wrongdoing; but it doesn't prevent him from doing the very same evil deed over again the minute he is rid of restraint. He would rather be a saint than a sinner; but somehow he doesn't keep in the rôole of saint, while the police help perpetuate the memory of his wickedness. After all, he is not so very different from the rest of us.