"How the other Half lives" is one of the most celebrated books on the subject of deplorable living and working conditions
of
immigrants at the turn of the century. Jacob Riis's powerful account of life in tenement buildings in New York City was first published in 1890 and took American's largely complacent majority by storm. The paper shows that the book may have been about the poor and the destitute of New York City, but it was meant for the 'other half' that was not portrayed in the book. The readers were those who had little or nothing in common with the real life characters of the book, and this
explains the main purpose of the book to us. The paper explains that Riis saw the immigrants' heart-rending life in the tenements from the eye of his camera and then made the middle-class and upper-class Americans see it for themselves through his sharp essays and scathing images.