Perhaps you know something of his success as a newspaper man. He knew how to gather news; and he knew how to find the words that make bare facts live. The days and nights of privation had been rich in experience. He was truly “a part of all that he had met.” Something of his intimate acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of existence, something of his warm, understanding sympathy for every variety of human joy and sorrow, crept into his work. Besides, the young man had boundless enthusiasm and tireless industry.
“That chap just seems to eat work,” said his fellow-reporters.
One day a very special letter came from Denmark, which told him that his gentle Elizabeth was quite convinced that he was indeed the prince of her life story. So, as it turned out, he didn’t have to make a fortune before he was able to bring her to share his home in New York. With her it seemed that he brought the best of the old life into the new—
Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people.
The only homesick times that he knew now were the days when his work as a reporter took him to the streets of the miserable tenements. All his soul cried out against these places where the poor, the weak, and the wicked, the old, the sick, and helpless babies were all herded together in damp, dingy rooms where the purifying sunlight never entered. During his years of wandering in search of work he had gained an intimate knowledge of such conditions. He knew what poverty meant and how it felt. Afterward, when he saw this hideous squalor, he shared it. These people were his neighbors.
“Over against the tenements of our cities,” he said, “ever rise in my mind the fields, the woods, God’s open sky, as accusers and witnesses that his temple is being defiled and man dwarfed in body and soul.”
He knew that the one way to remove such evils and to force people to put up decent houses for the poor was to bring the facts out in the open. When he described what he had seen, the words seemed to mean little to many of the people that he wanted to reach. Then he hit upon the plan of taking pictures. These pictures served to illustrate some very direct talks he gave in the churches. Later, many of them made an important part of his book, “How the Other Half Lives.”
“These people are your neighbors,” said Jacob Riis. “It is the business of the fortunate half of those who live in our great cities to find out how the other half lives. No one can live to himself or die to himself—
‘If you will not grub for your neighbor’s weeds,
In your own green garden you’ll find the seeds.’ ”
Through his persistent campaigning, one of the very worst parts of New York, known as Mulberry Bend, a veritable network of alleys which gave hiding to misery and crime untold, was bought by the city, the buildings torn down, and the spot converted into a public park.