Eager always to try his hand at something new, Riis purchased a stereopticon and experimented with it in such small time as was left from his long day of newspaper activity and his domestic cares. It was to play a large part in his later life. “No effort to add in any way to one’s stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in this world of changes and emergencies, and Providence has a way of ranging itself on the side of the man with the strongest battalions of resources when the emergency does come.”
For a long time after the sale of the Brooklyn paper Riis had tried to get a foothold on one of the New York dailies. His persistence was again rewarded and the position of a reporter on the Tribune was opened to him. Soon after came the recognition of his earnest and conscientious work in the form of an appointment to represent his paper at Police Headquarters. It was a hard and dangerous job, which required cool nerve and indefatigable energy. But of greater importance than the money that it paid, or the honor of the advancement, was the opportunity it afforded the young reporter to study at first-hand the conditions in which men and women lived in the congested tenements of the city—a study which placed at his hand the knowledge which later enabled him to become the champion of the slums.
The police reporter on a newspaper gathers and writes all the news that means trouble to someone—the fires, suicides, murders, and robberies. The Tribune office was in Mulberry Street, opposite Police Headquarters. All the rival newspapers had offices in the neighborhood, and among the reporters there was keen rivalry for news. Naturally, the police did not help, for to be “news” it must be discovered before it reached Police Headquarters, when all would know of it. Friendships and detective skill were important factors. Each reporter tried to be the first to get the news, write it up, and get it to his paper. There was lively competition among the reporters, for the man who got the news in print first had a “scoop” on his rivals.
Out of this busy life of the newspaper man, Riis now began to develop that interest which soon dominated his very existence; for from his daily contact with the daily life of the city slums he drew the inspiration to do his small part to better the conditions of the lives of those around him. Small as were his first efforts, there was soon inspired a veritable crusade in the soul of the Danish-American. Not as a newspaper reporter, not because he won his livelihood in the face of every difficulty, but because of his unselfish interest in his fellow men is Jacob Riis great among Americans.
One day he picked up a New York paper and saw that the Health Department reported that during the past two weeks there had been a “trace of nitrates” in the city water. For months cholera, the dreaded scourge that comes from impure water and has, in the life of the world, killed more people than all the battles, had threatened the city. Riis investigated. The water supplying two million people must be pure. “Nitrates” were a sign of sewage contamination. The city was threatened, and no one seemed to realize the danger. The humble investigations of the newspaper reporter were to produce far-reaching results.
Riis wrote an article that day for the Evening Sun, and advised the people to boil the water before drinking it. Then, with a camera in his hand, he spent a week following to its source every stream that discharged into the Croton River. He found evidence enough: town after town discharged its sewage into the water which supplied New York City; people bathed in it; cities dumped refuse into it. With exact details, and the evidence illustrated with photographs, he returned.
The city was saved. So strong was the evidence that over a million dollars was promptly spent by the city to guard the water-supply. The real public-service life of Riis had begun.
In 1884, an awakened interest in the housing conditions in the tenement districts came to a head with the establishment of the Tenement-House Commission. It brought out the fact that the people living in the tenements were “better than the houses.” Riis worked heart and soul for the cause. Four years later the reform was assured, with the backing of such men as Dr. Felix Adler and Alfred T. White. The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed.
Now Riis turned to other conditions which cried aloud for reform. The “Bend” in Mulberry Street and the Police Lodging-Room system needed him. The “Bend” was a crowded slum that for a half-century had been the centre of vice and misery. Riis aroused the community, and in 1888 a bill was introduced in the Legislature to wipe it out bodily. To-day, a city park, a breathing-place and playground marks the site.
The Police Lodging-Room was another civic disgrace and a breeder of crime. In these vile and filthy rooms the Police Department gave night lodging to thousands of vagrants. The idea sounds well enough, but the system was wrong, and Riis realized it. In these foul quarters young men lodged with professional beggars and criminals, and learned the ways of vice; in these rooms was bred disease, physical as well as moral. Riis warned the city through his paper. Then his prophecies came true: typhus broke out in the Police Lodging-Rooms.