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How The Other Half Lives Summary

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Throughout history, there were many people who viewed the United States as a one-way boat ride to complete freedom. Freedom from their country, whether it was undergoing a depression, dictatorship or a famine. The opening of Ellis Island in 1892 was one of the most unforgettable dates in America’s history. When the immigrants came through the island, they realized that it wasn’t just people from their country, but from all around the world. The millions of immigrants who came to America were mainly from southern and eastern Europe, consisting mainly of Italians, Greeks and Jews. There were about 1,800 to 2,100 arrivals per day of people aging from babies to grandparents. It was seen that there were a great amount of immigrants from Ireland …show more content…

When the natives began to realize that the immigrants were easily getting jobs because they were willing to work for much less, they became very angry because they didn’t want to lose their jobs and also because the immigrants didn’t know the English language. What they didn’t understand was that the factory workers would rather teach someone the job, pay them much less rather than pay someone more, and hire people that don’t speak Englsih. So, they tried to shut out the immigrants, until an immigrant himself Jacob Riis, published “How The Other Half Lives”. This book soon became the talk of the city because it showed what was really going on in the alleys and closed doors of the New York, the things that the upper class native’s didn’t realize. When they invented flash photography, Riis went around and took pictures of these immigrants and poor people living in their tenements, on top of garbage cans, in tight spaces, children playing in dirty clothes, and malnourished people everywhere. He captured the real problems that were going on with these poor people. Riis wanted to open the eyes of the upper class to show them that even though they may be mad about the lower class taking their jobs, they live in the utmost

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