How the Other Half Lives Questions
How does Riis describe tenements?
"It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor."
What is a Steet Arab?
Child runaways (from abusive, foodless or such homes? who are not always taken in by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to children (even though they are legally to young to work) and work as newsboys. They sometimes stay in Children's Aid society homes or live in Newsboys lodging houses.
What are some of the problems caused by cramped, badly ventillated tenements?
Chlorea and other diseases spread more easily, Children often died of suffocation and fires happened easily.
What ways do beggars on the streets lie to get more money?
Families pretending to be destitute, fake widows, teams of children beaten and sent to beg for profit, fake blind people, fake, borrowed or drugged babies
What does the author think of the cheap lodging houses?
He thinks it makes it easy for people to fall back into crime (counter-balancing any good things or reform). Also a lot of voter fraud happens in them. It can also make it easy to find criminals to be accomplices for to make easy money.
What does the author think of the wives of the Chinese men?
He thinks they are drugged up (on opium) underage white girls. He believes their wives are trafficked
What are three ways the author thinks tenements can be reformed?
I. By law. II. By remodelling and making the most out of the old houses. III. By building new, model tenements.
Who lived in tenements?
Immigrant communities, there was no distinctly American tenement community. Often times the old immigrant populations would become landlords for the new.
Was a fire beneficial or not for a tenement owner?
It could be beneficial, because occasionally tenements were insured for even more than the owner earned in a year.
What was the Tenement-House Act of 1867?
It took two years to be implemented. It forced tenement owners to make windows in interior rooms for ventillation (not always light). Cellar homes (below flood lines and such) were gotten rid of. Authorities could not destroy houses, only clear them in extreme circumstances. Sanitary Law also was used more.
What ethnic groups does the author think are born gamblers?
Italians, Chinese, African-Americans
What do the Bohemians (Czech) do in the city? Who did this trade belong to in the families originally
Many are cigar makers (it was originally the women's jobs, but the unions won't admit them), they work in tenement factories with low wages (though better conditions than Jewish clothes makers). They have enourmous rents (remember they work where they live).
Were those that lived in tenements "fit to live in a nice house?"
No, because even when given nice things in their tenements (plumbing, wood closets) they sold them and trashed the tenement. Even sometimes when tenements were fixed up, those who had lived there left because it no longer felt homely.
Do tenement owners and tenants welcome reform?
No, they fight it
Do asylums for insane help at all?
No, they just feed into the stystem.
How was working as a woman from the tenements like in this time?
Not a living wage (gender pay gap), girls in shops need to pay overly for lodgings, food and uniforms, materials and machines so much that at the end barely any money left. They lie about ages. Finding work as a prostitute is much easier and more lucrative.
How does the author characterize the Jews?
Not well integrated (speak their own languages), thifty and miserly (rather have money in the bank than food on the table), families work hard on clothes in their tenement houses, lots of disease and uncleanliness, good at math, fast to run to the police with slighest crime, have lots of "boarders" in their tenements, like going to dance clubs and have taken over local schools (schools close for Jewish holidays and there are many talmudic schools). They also buy cheap foods (many pickles) to save money.
Do saloons with signs outside saying "no beer or liquor is given to children" actually tell the truth?
Only if the child has no money for alcohol, if he does he gets it
Where were paupers buried?
Potter's Field, sometimes more than one per grave spot
What were the original tenements like and who owned them?
Real Estate Agents and Boarding House keepers bought up old homes and divided them into multiple tiny rooms that often lacks windows, ventillation and good plumbing.
What do the gangs do?
Rob drunks, fight with police, blackmail politions and claim they aren't breaking the law (extortion is voluntary contribution and they win money "gambling," ect.)
Why is there a large black population in the tenements?
Since the Civil war, the great Northern Migration happened
Tell me about fire escapes and tenements?
Sometimes people lived on them, other times they were placed in ways so they could not actually be reached.
Where do gangs mostly come from?
Sons (and their sweet hearts fight too occasionally) of immigrants (English, Irish and German).
Tell me about the symbiotic relationships between tramps and bartenders around Christmas time?
The bartenders invite tramps to huddle around fire (but they have to stay awake, proving it by swinging a limb, to look more miserable) to make custors want to come in
Why does the author believe NYC has the cheapest clothing in the world?
The hard working Jews work on starvation wages without following proper work procedures (ten hours is the legal work day in the factory, 45 minutes are allowed for dinner, and children between 14 and 16 cannot be employed unless they read and write english)
Why is it harder for the blacks than the white immigrants in the city?
The landlords can abuse them (only letting them live some places) and lie about rent. They also have trouble finding skilled jobs and are only offered menial ones.
What did the city do for the blind in recognition of the fact they did not take care of them?
The superintendent of Out-door Poor yearly distributed twenty thousand dollars (to be separated) to the poor blind of the city.
What did early tenement owners do to make their tenements bigger/more profitable?
They built unsafe wooden stories on top of the original and got rid of the gardens and paved paths. They turned them into rear houses. They also made their tenements even smaller.
How are children from the tenements abandoned? Can they be taken away?
They can be left at foundling asylums, they can be left on steps of rich (who don't want them) and eventually end up at Randall's Island, they can be left on the streets (end up in same place as before, with higher liklihood of death). It cases of extreme abusive homes, children can be taken away.
What happens to tramps (all genders, but many women ran them) found at stale beer dives?
They could be sent for 6 months to a prison island (Rikers), they could be bribed to vote for certain officials
What happens to state-cared for abandoned children at age 4-5? Also for some "street arabs?"
They get sent west for homes
In what way was how the Italians got to America like human-trafficking?
They were told by greedy Italian steam-ship agents and bankers that America is a land of plenty, to get there he has to buy an expensive ticket (mortaging his home, selling everything he owned and giving his wages). Even after getting to America, the Italian is often still in debt and the middleman that took him to America contraaacts him out to railroad owners, makes him clean in the ash barrel or do other dirty work.
How can the poor earn money off abandoned babies?
With baby farms state rents the babies out to poor families to be fed, but they are often murdered (fed bad like and kept pareogoric (quiet) by neglect or they are given to nursing mothers as pay babies.
What is it like to be a child from the tenements?
You often aren't sent to school or trade school and so spend time on the streets, turning to crime. Truant officers and agents take rogue children to reformatories where they meet other bad (or worse) children who make them worse. They don't go to church and reformatories give them better beds and food than their own parents can
Is suicide common in the tenements?
extremely
Did the police acknowledge the existence of street gangs?
no
What caused the creation of tenements?
the huge amount of immigration following the war of 1812
Who does the author think the poor people of the tenements think owed them?
the world
