Jacob Riis, originally from Denmark, made the book How the Other Half Lives, which showed how bad the conditions were on the Lower East Side of the New York ghettos. Riis also worked for the New York Tribune. With aid from Roosevelt, New York Governor, he was able help bring about housing legislations to help the the impoverished. Riis was one of those guys who made sure tenement codes were being enforced by landlords to prevent fires and other health hazards. Riis was very effective becasue he made the concerns of the New York City slums concerns of everyone who viewed his photographs and/or read his books. Riis was an activist who spoke at certain gatherings. Riis was a muckraking journalist. Muckraking journalism talked about the problems and injustices that were not seen by the masses. Here is an excerpt from a speech at the Labors of the Tenement House Chapter of the King's Daughters.
"The reason charity has been discredited is because it has worked with the broken fragments, the drunken and the shiftless, helping as it could, mourning that such things must be, but never asking the reason why or knowing anything of the honest, thrifty poor who live lives of heroism such as we cannot live."
"The reason charity has been discredited is because it has worked with the broken fragments, the drunken and the shiftless, helping as it could, mourning that such things must be, but never asking the reason why or knowing anything of the honest, thrifty poor who live lives of heroism such as we cannot live."