The Battle With the Slum (Patterson Smith Reprint Series in Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems. Publication No. 77) [Hardcover]

Jacob A. Riis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1969 | ISBN-10: 0875850774 | ISBN-13: 978-0875850771

From Content: "The slum is as old as civilization. Civilization implies a race to get ahead. In a race there are usually some who for one cause or another cannot keep up, or are thrust out from among their fellows. " The battle with the slum began the day civilization recognized in it her enemy. It was a losing fight until conscience joined forces with fear and self-interest against it. When common sense and the golden rule obtain among men as a rule of practice, it will be over. The two have not always been classed together, but here they are plainly seen to belong together. Justice to the individual is accepted in theory as the only safe groundwork of the commonwealth. When it is practised in dealing with the slum, there will shortly be no slum. We need not wait for the millennium, to get rid of it. We can do it now. All that is required is that it shall not be left to itself. That is justice to it and to us, since its grievous ailment is that it cannot help itself. When a man is drowning, the thing to do is to pull him out of the water; afterward there will be time for talking it over. We got at it the other way in dealing with our social problems. The wise men had their day, and they decided to let bad enough alone; that it was unsafe to interfere with "causes that operate sociologically," as one survivor of these unfittest put it to me. It was a piece of scientific humbug that cost the age which listened to it dear. "Causes that operate sociologically" are the opportunity of the political and every other kind of scamp who trades upon the depravity and helplessness of the slum, and the refuge of the pessimist who is useless in the fight against them. We have not done yet paying the bills he ran up for us. Some time since we turned to, to pull the drowning man out, and it was time. A little while longer, and we should hardly have escaped being dragged down with him. The slum complaint had been chronic in all ages,  but the great changes which the nineteenth century saw, the new industry, political freedom, brought on an acute attack which put that very freedom in jeopardy. Too many of us had supposed that, built as our commonwealth was on universal suffrage, it would be proof against the complaints that harassed older states; but in fact it turned out that there was extra hazard in that. Having solemnly resolved that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shut our eyes and waited for the formula to work. It was as if a man with a cold should take the doctor's prescription to bed with him, expecting it to cure him. The formula was all right, but merely repeating it worked no cure. When, after a hundred years, we opened our eyes, it was upon sixty cents a day as the living wage of the working-woman in our cities; upon "knee pants" at forty cents a dozen for the making; upon the Potter's Field taking tithe of our city life, ten per cent each year for the trench, truly the Lost Tenth of the slum. Our country had grown great and rich; through our ports was poured food for the millions of Europe. But in the back streets multitudes huddled in ignorance and want. The foreign oppressor had been vanquished, the fetters stricken from the black man at home; but his white brother, in his bitter plight,  sent up a cry of distress that had in it a distinct note of menace. Political freedom we had won; but the problem of helpless poverty, grown vast with the added offscourings of the Old World,."

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 465 pages
• Publisher: Patterson Smith (June 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875850774
• ISBN-13: 978-0875850771
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,284,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lower East Side battlefield, June 27, 2004

By 

Rocco Dormarunno (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Battle with the Slum (New York City) (Paperback)

What sets THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM apart from Jacob Riis' classic, HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES, is this book's more active response to the conditions of the poor and disenfranchised in New York City's slums. HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES was a breakthrough in reporting. The reader was given a barrage of facts and statistics, as well as photographs and ethnic break-downs of each of the immigrant groups.

While THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM also includes photographs and statistics, it also reports on HOW these conditions have to be handled, and details the victories Riis and the reformers achieved in ridding the area of its more notorious elements. In almost militaristic fashion, Riis and the reformers battled corrupt local political machines (read Tammany Hall), interested businesses, and greedy landlords. Each neighborhood is practically mapped out like a battlefield. While HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES gives the reader an appreciation for the suffering that the poor, BATTLE WITH THE SLUM gives the reader an appreciation for Jacob Riis and what others like him have done.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Politics and Poverty, December 31, 2003

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Battle With the Slum (Hardcover)

Though not as heart-rending as "How the Other Half Lives", this book by Riis is important to shed light on how society cleaned up some of the worst slums in US history.

Tammany Hall, the Democratic party machine, was responsible for political patronage jobs that were do-nothing plums; a photo shows the street-cleaning of Tammany broomsmen versus that of a reformer who took over cleaning the precinct's streets. Various charitable societies worked strenuously to ameliorate the worst of the slums, to pass laws requiring light and air in tenements, though landlords were clever in circumventing or perverting the legal requirements (a window in a room could be on an inside wall; the airshaft--a thin passageway between buildings was all the air many apartments got.) Schools were at first overcrowded rooms with no desks, no ventilation and seventy students attempting to learn. Reformers got desks, ventilated buildings, smaller class sizes. This is a fascinating story of how people worked together to try to better an abusive situation in the poorest sections of American cities.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wake up Call, November 6, 2000

By 

krystlep (Dallas, Tx) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Battle with the Slum (New York City) (Paperback)

This book hilights the lows of urban life around the turn of the century, a time when immigration and migration were happening all around. City life in america had a huge underside with noise, crime, poverty, and squalor. Racial and ethnic conflicts were previlant. Riis' photos capture this side of city life in America.