Heroes of To-Day

by Mary Rosetta Parkman

Several years later, when Roosevelt was President, he asked Mr. Riis to investigate the conditions of streets and alleys in Washington. It developed that within three squares of the Capitol there was a system of alleys honeycombing a single block where a thousand people were crowded together under conditions that made a hotbed of misery, crime, and disease. The good citizens of the National Capital, who had read with horror about the evils of New York and Chicago, were rudely shaken out of their self-complacency. That square is now one of Washington’s parks.

Jacob Riis early learned the power of facts. His training as a reporter taught him that. He was also willing to work early and late, when the need arose, to gather them. At one time when there was a cholera scare in New York, he happened to look over the Health Department analysis of the water from the Croton River, and noticed that it was said to contain “a trace of nitrites.”

“What does that mean?” he asked of the chemist.

The reply was more learned than enlightening. The reporter was not satisfied. He carried his inquiry farther and discovered that “nitrites” meant that the water had been contaminated by sewage from towns above New York. Riis then took his camera and explored not only the Croton River to its source, but also every stream that emptied into it, taking pictures that proved in the most convincing way the dangers of the city. As a result, money was appropriated to buy a strip of land along the streams, wide enough to protect the people’s water-supply.

Another great work that Jacob Riis was enabled to carry through had its beginnings in that stormy chapter of his life when he found himself a vagrant among vagrants. He learned at first hand what the police lodging-houses for the homeless were like. At that time this charity was left in the hands of the police, who had neither the ability nor the desire to handle these cases wisely and humanely and to meet the problems of helping people to help themselves. Jacob Riis worked shoulder to shoulder with Theodore Roosevelt, who was then police commissioner of New York, to make the organized charity of the city an intelligent agency for relieving suffering and putting on their feet again those who were, for some reason, “down and out.” Many were brought back to wholesome living through the realization that they had “neighbors” who cared.

In the same way he worked for parks and playgrounds for the children. He saw that the city spoils much good human material.

“We talk a great deal about city toughs,” he says in his autobiography. “In nine cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose possibilities have all been smothered by the slum. With better opportunities they might have been heroes.”

Many honors came to Jacob Riis. He was known as a “boss reporter”; his books gave him a nation-wide fame; the King of Denmark sent him the Crusaders’ Cross, the greatest honor his native land could bestow; President Roosevelt called him the “most useful American” of his day. But I think what meant more to him than any or all of these things was the real affection of his many “neighbors,” especially the children.

Many times he gathered together boys and girls from the streets to enjoy a day with him in the country.

“This will help until we can give them trees and grass in their slum,” he would say, “and then there will be no slum.” His eyes grew very tender as he added, “No, there will be no slum; it will be a true City Beautiful—and the fairest blossoms there will be the children.”