Jacob August Riis (1849–1914) was a Danish-American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer. His writings and photographs of impoverished New Yorkers contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twentieth century.
Born in Ribe, Denmark, Riis emigrated to America in 1870 and became a police reporter on the New York Tribune (1877–88) and Sun (1888–99.) He published How the Other Half Lives (1890,) a horrifying description of immigrant poverty in New York. This book was notable for its first use of photographic evidence in social reportage.
Riis also wrote The Children of the Poor (1892) and Out of Mulberry Street (1896.) He championed the reforms of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote a study of him; he also published an autobiography, The Making of an American (1901.)
Riis was a crusader for small parks and playgrounds and reformed tenement housing and schools.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jacob Riis
Men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad.
—Jacob Riis
Topics: Optimism, Positive Attitudes
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
—Jacob Riis
Topics: Determination
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
—Jacob Riis
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, One Step at a Time, Persistence, Perseverance, Determination
Some defeats are only installments to victory.
—Jacob Riis
Topics: Failure
The slum is the measure of civilization.
—Jacob Riis
Topics: Civilization
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