How the Other Half Lives

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1890

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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis: “The Italian in New York”

Chapter 5, much shorter in length than its predecessor, repeats some of the ethnic generalizations of the previous chapters. The German, for instance, learns English “as a matter of duty,” the Polish Jew “as an investment,” and the Italian “slowly, if at all” (48). Furthermore, “[l]ike the Chinese, the Italian is a born gambler” (52). The main purpose of this brief chapter, however, as it is with nearly all of Riis’s chapters, is to depict the Italian immigrants as victims of greed, exploited by contractors and middlemen. A photograph (“In the Home of an Italian Rag-Picker, Jersey Street”) shows an Italian woman seated in her tenement, surrounded by barrels, buckets, and a few blankets, staring off into the distance. A ladder, which presumably leads to an upstairs bunk, stands nearby. The room appears to be approximately 8x10 feet. Violence abounds in the Italian slums. Riis concludes, however, by noting the Italian’s “redeeming traits,” such as honesty and loyalty (53).

Chapter 6 Summary and Analysis: “The Bend”

Riis explores “The Bend,” a notorious section of Mulberry Street, the “foul core of New York’s slums” (55). A survey from the 1860s found that only 24 of the Bend’s 609 tenements rated as “decent” (56). Dark and narrow alleys abound on single lots sporting as many as four separate tenement buildings. Italian immigrants constitute the vast majority here. The streets are colorful and crowded. On seasonable days, everyone is outside. A photo (“The Bend”) shows dirty-looking tenements on either side of the street with throngs of people in front of each building, each of which stands between three and five stories high with no discernable space between buildings. Abuse and murder are the Bend’s “everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals” (61). Children under five years old account for nearly 70% of the Bend’s annual deaths. In a nearby tenement, well-run by managers acting on Christian principles, the mortality rate is significantly lower.

A photo of a dangerous back alley (“Bandit’s Roost”) features 10 people, three of them hanging out first-floor windows with enough space between buildings to hang clothes-lines. In the daylight, they are probably safe enough from criminals. Another photo (“Bottle Alley”) shows an infamous Baxter Street alley, “a fair specimen of its kind,” filled with “piles of rags, of malodorous bones and musty paper” (64). On hot summer days, the tenements are unbearable. Further along Mulberry Street, 40 families are crammed into buildings that were designed to house five. Few rooms are empty on Mulberry Street, and many remain without houses. The chapter’s fourth and final photograph (“Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement—“Five Cents a Spot”) shows seven people, some with their faces obscured, most or all of whom appear to be adult men, lying under blankets, crammed into a single small room. Two share a bed. The others occupy a spot on the floor.