How the Other Half Lives

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1890

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Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17 Summary and Analysis: “The Street Arab”

“Street Arabs” are boys without homes who hawk newspapers in hopes of supporting themselves. Riis describes them as resilient and independent young souls who view the policeman as their enemy, an “agent” sent to deprive them of “their cherished freedom” (198). A photograph (“Didn’t Live Nowhere”) shows two such boys, dressed in rags yet looking dignified, the smaller of the two holding his right hand to his belt buckle in a sort of aristocratic pose. Some of these boys are runaways. Many are orphans, some literally and some effectively. In the latter case, the cause is usually a father who is imprisoned or has an alcohol addiction. As in the previous chapter, Riis touts the inestimable good done by the Children’s Aid Society in rescuing many of these boys from homelessness. A photograph (“Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters”) shows three young boys sleeping outside on a metal grate, their bodies propped up and their heads resting against a low stone wall. Another photograph (“Getting Ready for Supper in the Newsboys’ Lodging House”) shows a happier scene of five boys, albeit much older, cleaning up in a bathroom in preparation for dinner. These photos illustrate Riis’s argument for the value of private lodging-houses designed to rescue wayward and unhoused boys. In the same spirit of optimism, Riis notes that these lodging-houses produce “battalions of young emigrants that go every year to homes in the Far West, to grow up self-supporting men and women safe from the temptations and the vice of the city” (207). This observation is consistent with Riis’s broader argument that the lost children of the tenements are products of their circumstances, capable and worthy of redemption.

Chapter 18 Summary and Analysis: “The Reign of Rum”

After three consecutive chapters focused on the plight of tenement children, Riis turns his attention to the saloons, which constitutes an “omen of evil wherever it falls into the lives of the poor” (210). At just over five pages of text, “The Reign of Rum” is one of the book’s shorter chapters, perhaps because Riis regards the evil inherent in the saloon as too obvious to require extended proof. Paradoxically, Riis concedes that the saloons constitute “the one bright and cheery and humanly decent spot to be found” among the tenements—a massive indictment of both the landlords and the system that keeps tenants trapped in desperate poverty (210). Citing Health Department records, Riis shows that more than 40% of all the city’s saloons are located south of 14th Street in the tenement districts, but this is a low estimate of alcohol’s actual reach, for it counts only licensed establishments, and in New York City’s downtown there is scarcely “an open reading room, a cheerful coffee house, a decent club that is not a cloak for the traffic in rum” (211). A photograph (“A Downtown ‘Morgue’”) shows seven saloon patrons, two with their backs turned to the camera, in what appears to be a cellar with stone walls and a low ceiling. Saloon patrons are registered voters, and many saloon owners play an active role in city politics, making saloons the unhealthy center of political life. The saloons’ primary threat, however, is to humanity. Riis suggests that saloons regularly serve children. On one occasion, Riis followed a young child into a bar after 1:00am and personally “forbade the barkeeper to serve the boy,” at which the barkeeper was “mighty indignant” (215). Riis concludes by linking this chapter to the previous three, for he argues that the saloon’s “worst offence” is the “corruption of the child” (215-16).

Chapter 19 Summary and Analysis: “The Harvest of Tares”

The combination of alcohol and wayward boys leads directly to the street gangs of New York City. The street gang is “the ripe fruit of tenement-house growth” (218). Riis refers to the gang members as “toughs” and treats them with a mixture of disdain and sympathy, for the New York “tough” “is a queer bundle of contradictions at all times” (220). He can be a “cowardly ruffian” or a “possible hero” depending on circumstances and perspective (221). Quick to rage and violence, he nonetheless exhibits both showiness and wit, at least in the company of his companions. On West 37th Street, Riis snapped a photograph (“A Growler Gang in Session”) of young “toughs” who were eager to pose for him. Seven “toughs” appear in the photo, ranging from young teenagers to young men, at least by appearances. One has hands in pockets, head slightly bowed, hat covering his eyes, and directly facing the camera, looking as if he considers his image worthy of being recorded for posterity.

Few gang activities are as amusing as this scene on West 37th Street. In Poverty Gap, the “Alley Gang” murdered a young boy for the crime of “trying to earn an honest living” (224). Along the East River, the “Rag Gang” engages in “periodical battles with the police” (225). For years, the “infamous Wyho Gang” in the Sixth Ward “absorbed the worst depravity of the Bend”—described in Chapter 6 as the most notorious of all tenement districts (227). A pair of side-by-side photographs borrowed from New York City police inspector Thomas Byrnes’s collection (“Typical Toughs [From the Rogues’ Gallery]”) show two gang members in close-up, mugshot-style poses. Nearly all “toughs” are young; one of every eight people arrested in New York City is under the age of 20. Riis identifies another half-dozen gangs whose members operate near the rivers, particularly the East River. The chapter’s third and final photograph (“Hunting River Thieves”) shows two policemen on patrol in a rowboat. For New York’s “toughs,” the story often ends behind a prison wall. The “tough” is a product of the tenements, so when he emerges from prison he is theoretically redeemable but seldom redeemed: “Very soon he sinks back into his old surroundings, to rise no more until he is lost to view in the queer, mysterious way in which thieves and fallen women disappear” (233).