How the Other Half Lives Essay

With little money in their pockets and no idea of where they might stay, the search for jobs was desperate. However having thousands of immigrants arriving in NYC around the same time caused job opportunities to be limited. With no money, many were left homeless with no place to go but the streets of New York. Having people living on the streets caused overpopulation of the city and left the city dirty and dismantled. Along with the fall of the city the crime rate began to increase dramaticlly due to immigrants going to desperate measures to make money. When an immigrant was lucky enough to find a job they faced the challenge of language barrier, poor working conditions and low wages. These low wages could hardly afford to feed their families let alone provide a decent shelter. This created what would be known as the slums of New York City. The city was being filled with large apartment buildings that were run down and overpopulated with immigrants. Over population began creating conflicts between different ethnic groups throughout New York City. Eventually leading to the divison of the city into sections based on common ethnic backrounds. Nativism however would be a common problem as it increased because of hatred towards immigrants over such issues including the loss of opportunities for already settled natives to the area. To avoid this hatred many immigrants chose to take on other names or alter their own last name. Due to many families

The narrator is caught between his freedom and success in Paris and his past, marred by racism, which he is again about to confront. Using the flashback episode as an example of what he expects on his return, the narrator details the horrible feelings of helplessness and hatred generated by racist behavior. His family in the United States experienced prejudice firsthand and it damaged them forever. His father 's and sister 's lives were destroyed by racism, and the narrator escaped to France to avoid the same fate. Now famous, he must come to terms with his expatriate status, and find a way for his son to live without the same scars of racism.

These “newcomers” did not deserve to come here and steal their jobs. Mike Trudic’s account from his childhood referred to his father’s hunt in America to desperately find work, “At the end of a week he was taken ill and died. It said he died of a broken heart”(Mike, 188). There were just too many workers and not enough jobs to be filled. Another first hand source provided by Rose Cohen, called Out of the Shadow, depicts the story of a jewish girl in New York and the experiences her family goes through in order to reach a sustainable lifestyle. The struggles included descriptions of harsh working conditions and anti-semitism, which created difficulty for immigrants who were trying to assimilate into the American culture.

In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker side of the nation's lower class. Though it seems that he blamed both the victims and the board forces of society, I believe that he placed more of the blame on the board forces for the conditions that many immigrants faced.

Her stubbornness and strict discipline is evident when she pokes Sophie with a stick, trying to make Sophie come out of a foxhole in which she hid herself in, not giving up on the idea of the punishment. The character is round, as we are introduced to her most inner thoughts and personality traits while she narrates the story. At the same time, the protagonist is a static character, since her critical behavior of other cultures does not change throughout the story. In the end, the main character still displays her intolerance when she says, “Of course, I shouldn’t say Irish this, Irish that, especially now I am become honorary Irish myself, according to Bess. Me! Who’s Irish? I say”. The protagonist represents someone who despite being herself an immigrant sees other cultures and ethnicities as outsiders and is critical of others such as her son-in-law’s family and the previous American babysitter.

In the late 1800s , America became the land of new opportunities and new beginnings and New York City became the first landmark for immigrants. New York City was home to Ellis Island, the area in which migrants were to be handed for freedom to enter the nation. Living in New York City gave work and availability to ports. In time the city gave the chance to outsider's to construct groups with individuals from their nation , they were classified as new and old settlers. Old outsiders included Germans, Irish and, English. The new outsiders incorporated those from Italy, Russia, Poland and Austria-Hungary. In 1875, the New York City populace was a little 1 million individuals contrasted with the 3,5 million it held when the new century

During the late 19th century more and more immigrants were leaving their native European countries due to the promise of a better life in America. This however was not always the case. The excerpt, Waifs of the City’s Slums, is from a book written and photographed by Jacob Riis in 1890. How the Other Half Live, Riis’s book, s was used to highlight the injustices many immigrants faced in the lower East Side of New York City. His writing showed that he was intolerant towards certain races, but despite his feeling he was able to show the real need for such a book. Riis separated the people in the slum into two different categories; those who deserved help and those who did not. Waifs of the City’s Slums is chapter sixteen of the book; this chapter

Immigrants coming over from Europe had not a dime to spare but a heart filled with ambition. In The Jungle, the Chicago stockyards saw its share of discrimination. Immigrants in particular, always having the short end of the stick, faced countless difficulties. Many saw them as ignorant, unsophisticated beings that could only be used for mule labor. They endure agonizing work because they are immigrants and according to the Americans living there, they were below them. They earn wages so low it became difficult not to starve. Jurgis describes the difficulties that came with the intense work. He stated “If one of them be a minute late, he will be docked an hour's pay, and if he be many minutes late, he will be apt to find his brass check turned to the wall, which will send him out to join the hungry mob that waits every morning at the gates of the houses, from six o'clock until nearly half-past eight" (Sinclair 21). If they came late then they were fired. There were no second chances. The managers treat these immigrants not as humans but animals. Immigrants were allowed no sick days and if they were to get injured they would be fired as well, which was not the case for Americans who had been there longer. The injustice done was unbearable and they had to deal with it because they needed any money they could get. There dreams of a life of ease and welfare were crushed by prejudice views. Discrimination based on social class is also seen in The Great Gatsby. What connects Long Island to the bustling city of New York is what Fitzgerald calls the Valley of Ashes. Here is where the poor and penniless men work and live. Just like the immigrants, these lower class people have a much harder path at achieving their American Dream. The Valley of Ashes was where “.. ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys

Tom Bissell’s, a teacher at Portland State University, main idea was to indicate to his audience why video games matter to him by using various argumentative appeals. One must ask themselves, can this author be worthy of respect? Can he give his readers enough facts to get his argument across? Will he try to give us a soft story to buy his way into in his argument? Throughout most of Bissell’s book, he uses the logical appeal by describing, in great detail, Fallout 3. Sadly he lacks the Emotional appeal to complete this argument and he loses my credibility throughout the article.

What, in Crane’s telling, was family life like for working-class immigrants in late- 19th Century NYC?

The United States’ population surged between 1870 and 1924. Immigrants were flooding into the country from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and other countries. They saw America as a great land of opportunity that fulfilled their necessities. The majority of the immigrants settled in the major cities, as their was an abundance of job opportunities, and easy access to transportation. John Radzitowksi’s essay describes the Polish agricultural colonies in Minnesota. It also depicts how immigrants adapted to American life. The first document shows how some immigrants found it difficult to adapt and settle in a new land, and it shows that this was true for Irish immigrant Sam Gray. The second document is a story of Rocco Corresca, a poor

In the mid-1920s, there was an even bigger increase in Irish immigrants to Chicago. Due to this increase in population, they moved up financially than other Europeans ethnicities. Instead of residing in lower-class areas, they began to disperse outwards. The areas where the Irish decided to move to were middle-class and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Not many other ethnicities lived in these areas because they were not as financially secure as the Irish had become due to all the work they had received over the years. The neighborhoods the Irish lived in now were mainly in the Near North Side. Areas like, Lincoln Park, Lake View, and Uptown Areas (Cutler, 1973, 49-54).

Today, New York City is the most populated city in the United States. New York City, NYC, is made up of five boroughs including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island. Ellis Island, the first immigration station, and the statue of liberty are both located in New York. Immigrants went for more freedom in the 1800s and for economic and other opportunities back then and even now. Since NYC is such a large city, there are more job opportunities which draws people to the city. Also, there are an abundance of attractions and much more cultural diversity. All of these factors contribute to the reason the population is a whopping 8.538 million people!

In 1836, Bridgeport was born out of the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This alone “guaranteed Bridgeport 's position as an industrial center,” as it encouraged the creation of lumberyards, manufacturing plants, and packing houses (Bridgeport, Encyclopedia of Chicago, 1). Due to the steady access to employment, many immigrants settled and searched for work in the neighborhood. This translated into a growing foreign ‘white’ population as it “stood as a bastion of white ethnic communities” (1). The population consisted of mostly Irish, German, Norwegian, and Polish immigrants. Most residents had primarily resigned to working within local industry with many individuals, particularly the Irish, saw opportunities for upward mobility through work in municipal government (1). This turned Bridgeport into a political hub producing many individuals that “dominated city government” and most notoriously gave birth to Mayor Richard J. Daley, “[who] controlled one of the most powerful machines in urban America [from 1955] until his death in 1976 (1). However, it was not until the 1960s that Bridgeport experienced a small influx [.02%] of black families moving into the neighborhood (1). By this time “the Supreme Court of the United States declared restrictive covenants unenforceable in the courts…[and] change in Chicago race relations had been hastened by the national trend toward desegregation and ‘integration’” (St. Clair Drake and Cayton, 1607,

Germans who stayed in the urban areas of the East immediately picked up work as talented skilled workers or as entrepreneurs. Comparing the connections between these groups helps in comprehending the significance of the economic issues in the development of racial attitudes. In Buffalo, a major business transit point, a critical minority of African Americans held more reliable employment. Buffalo’s African Americans and Germans generally did not meet up as competitors at work or in the housing business sector, however they did live as neighbors and frequently formed social relationships. Irish and African Americans were more likely to share the same workspace as competitors. Like blacks, Irish workers were well on the way to hold employments in the most minimal paying, slightest secure, and most-unskilled sector of the city's economy. There were additional similarities between their households and family structures. The Irish considered themselves to be victims, shielding what little they had against black competitors. Therefore, relationships between blacks and immigrants were more complex than they are often