Read this passage from Jacob Riis’ “How the Other Half Lives,” and then answer the question that follows.
How the Other Half Lives
When once I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living in it I was told: one hundred and forty families, one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. The answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New York, very nearly so for the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. One may find for the asking an Italian, a German, a French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony. Even the Arab, who peddles “holy earth” from the Battery as a direct importation from Jerusalem, has his exclusive preserves at the lower end of Washington Street. The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements. . .
The once unwelcome Irishman has been followed in his turn by the Italian, the Russian Jew, and the Chinaman, and has himself taken a hand of opposition, quite as bitter and quite as ineffectual, against these later hordes. Wherever these have gone they have crowded him out, possessing the block, the street, the ward with their denser swarms. . . .
A map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow.
Question Prompt
Consider the following questions:
· How does Riis’s account compare with the “melting pot” thesis?
· What ethnic/racial group that would later occupy the slums of northern cities is absent from this mixed crowd?
· What comparisons could be made between the poor neighborhoods of the late nineteenth century and those of today?