American history tv on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Youre looking at a time laps video reco lapse video, next on American History tvs american artifacts we visit the Thomas Jefferson building to learn. This program is just under an hour. Im sheryl, heim an exhibit director at the library of congress. Im barbara bear. Im a historian in the manuscript division. This jacob riis is a copresentation with the museum of the city of new york. It is the first time that the collections of the library of congress, the jacob riis papers have been married with the collection in the museum of the city of new york. We picked the word copresentation very carefully, because the exhibition here actually follows an exhibit that was at the museum of the city of new york and really that exhibit which was called jacob riis, revealing new yorks other half, was slightly difference. It looks at riis in a different way, concentrating more on his boggy and photographry. Here we look at riis the journalist. The papers number 3,000 in the manuscript division, theyre featured well in this exhibition and have sort of come to the fore front. We already wanted to emphasize the combination of the photographs in terms of his career as a photojournalist. People think of him as a writer or a photographer. Were emphasizing the combination of those two things and his role as a communicator. We have organized the exhibit by different ways that and the different mediums that riis used as a reformer, and as an ally with other people who were getting the word out and educating the public about urban poverty, about immigration and the density of housing in lower manhattan, and to provide solutions to those kinds of issues, and hes really a creature of the gilded age. He comes into real celebrity in the 1890s and the early 1900s. So its kind of on that cusp between older models of poverty from the gilded aim in the late victorian period and the new aggressive era, more governmental kinds of policies and solutions, so he had a foot in both worlds and thats another major point in the exhibit. Jay job riis was borne in 1849 in denmark. He was the son of a schoolteacher and was raised in this very beautiful small town in denmark. He was not a good student, although he loved to read. He played hooky a lot. He had a lot of sympathy for truant young boys when he tall. Some of his articles address true ansi, c antsy. When he was 21yearold in 1870 he came to the United States by himself. He found work doing all kinds of odd jobs, worked as a laborer, a door to door salesman, sometimes homeless, sometimes sleeping at night in the lodging houses. All this experience he brought into his articles later as he was more established as a Police Reporter and had a salaried job in the lower part of manhattan. My names bonnie, and i wrote the complete collection catalog of rii ss photograph published on the occasion of the exhibition. I started in the 1980s in rii ss new york photographs. He was a journalist and he was a celebrity and he saved all of the documentation of his career. He wanted to be remembered for posterity. He created scrapbooks. He saved his manscrips, every scrap of paper and he abandoned his photographs because he didnt think they were of any value apart from his articles a and. There was a photographer riis died in 1914. In 1940s a photographer named alexander lamb noticed in rii ss book how the other half live. On the title page it says with illustrations after photographiced by the ather. He said where are the photographs. After several years of searching, he tracked down rii ss son and with much coercing got rii ss son to try to find pictures, which turned out to be in the attic in the familys home in squooens, new york, that was about to be torn down. His son discovered 400odd negatives, 300 land earn slides and almost 200 paper prints and delivered them to alexander oland, the photograph, taking a couple of years kpraeted an exhibition from the negatives, making beautiful modder prints from the negatives and working with the curator of the museum of new york. In the battle with the slum, beautiful enlarged pictures along with kpermtsz from ri, ss writings established him as an important photographer. My problem as a curator in the 1980s was we dont have prints to show because those almost 200 vintage prints, about half of which were not by riis at all, and the rest were not exhibitble at all, in such poor condition. Working with the museum staff, we applied for i applied for a grant for the National Endowment for the humanities and we made a set of what they call vintage printed material prints, the purpose being to make prints that would look like those that riis would recognize. He never worked in the dark room. He went to a commercial several commercial studios and said i need prints, i need lantern slides. He himself used the camera but was not an expert technician, so we wanted these very expert technicians who the museum hired to make shes prints, not to do what alexander land did in the 40s, but simply to make contact prints from the negative and that is what is on exhibition here to represent rii ss photographs. There was a particular in terms of you are back reform and he eventually would succeed in working with municipal authorities to replace it with a park, which is another story we tell deeper into the exhibit with, original items. Again, the paradox riss is he wasnt a real photograph fehr. He used the camera for a very few years, less than ten years, and he only took about 300 pictures, about a third of which were family snapshots and other things that are not what we not of historic importance. The most famous picture today is bandits roof which shows a couple of italian toughs wearing boller hats. That was copied by martin score zazy in the movie the gangs of new york. When he first had the idea to illustrate the slums in 1887, he reached out to a photographer friend and found two photographers who were interested in flash, flash photographer was the reason he had the idea to eastern use photographs at all. He was a writer. He was a journalist. He was writing in a daily newspaper about conditions in the slum. He read in the newspaper in 1887 that there was this New Invention of flash powder that could illuminate the darkness. So he worked with two other photographers who were serious amateurs who were interested in the technology of flash. Among their photographs is bandits roost. This has two lenlzs. There are two images but it is the right side which has the two tufts in the boller. Thats did famous image. His most famous was not taken by him. In flash photograph called hits the spot. What its demonstrating is people who pay 5 cents or 7 cents to to sleep for the night in a tenement house. The people up on the shelf paid 7 and on the floor 5. There was a law in new york that you had to provide a bed for someone and the lowest you could charge was 7 cents. This was an illegal shelter and riss took the picture, that was taken by him, not by the other amateurs. He took the picture a member of the Sanitary Police who are essentially raiding the place and saying this get up and out, this is illegal. So entering this room which only had the slightest bit of light from coal stove that was providing heat for the room. Riss entered with the police, set up his camera, essentially set off an explosion, which sounded like a gun, a boom with smoke and fire and whats captured in the picture is the faces some people are still sleeping and other people vn anewsed and look sort of stricken, for good respect under the circumstance. The people in the room, 13 people in the room, including an infant, a screaming infant. Its a horrific scene. He used the picture to try to rouse authorities to enforcing laws about these lodging houses. And he describes that in his book. So that is a fantastic example of risss flash photographs creating a very powerful port rate of inhumane conditions. He was essentially victimizing the subjects. He scared these people to death and they look it and that is a criticism, a modern criticism today of these flach photographs. It was not his intention but it is from a contemporary piston a problem. The middle photograph is the signature photograph for our exhibit. This is little katy. It represents another phase in risss approach to his subject matter in photography. Originally he worked with amateur photographers to take the photographs. Then he started taking them himself. The bandits roof was his first book. Katy was in his second book called children of the poor. He was more like a social worker, caseworker. He had discussions with his subject matters where here the logisticsers were surprised by men bursting into the room and taking their photograph. He learned katys name. He was living with her siblings in a 49th street tenement. His mother had died. When asked what do i do, she said i scrubs. Katy stayed at home. Shes nine years old and she scrubbed and cooked for the family and went to school when she could. This is a birdseye view of new york in 1879. Birdseye views were popular until really the turn slightly after the turn of the century, and they put buildings in sort and sort of gave an idea of the density of space and put buildings in perspective, so you see the Lower East Side here where riss was primarily working, and it is astounding sort of how many people are sort of crammed and how many structures are crammed into this space. The u. S. Census bureau said 1. 5 Million People living primarily in lower manhattan. Riss claimed it was the largest population, most densely populated city on earth, which may or may not have been the case, but thats how he claimed in how the other half lives. I think if you look at the map, it speaks to that density, that crowdedness, sort of the issues that he was addressing. So we had been talking about the importance that jacob riss had lived many of the issues he wrote about as a Police Reporter and how he came from denmark in 1870 at the age of 20. In our first case in the exhibit we emphasize his life story or biography. We used notes that we have in his manuscript collection at the library of congress from the making of an american, which is his auto bbiographyautobiograph. He gave this as a land earn slide rec chulecture, based on making of an american and also his book battle of the slum. We have featured pages from that in almost all the cases. For the auto biography, he talked about his naivete. He was fluent in english when he came to the United States but one of his favorite authors was james physiciany moore cooper and he had this notion that america was the wild west and he said we didnt know the difference east and west. He gets out at castle garden. Hes in this metropolis of new york and there are no box offuf. He was making fun of himself. He was telling jokes in his lecture. This is a funny story about this green kid getting off the boat and buying a rover, which he scrapped to that side of his coat. He was strutting down broadway and the Police Stopped him and said son, maybe youll get rid of the gun. It was a fun story. It was a hard time goff jacob riss. He was unable to find steady work. He worked a lot of odd jobs and he got very depressed. One of the things were showing is a wonderful early diary of his thats written partly in danish and then he switches to english. In the diary, its about his loneliness when he first came here and pining for his love elizabeth, which was at that point unrequited. She was back in denmark. Really suicidal feelings. Theres a great love score with riss and his wife elizabeth. Eventually she does succumb to his courtship and they marry in 1876 in denmark and they come back and settle first in brooklyn and then in Richland Hill in queens new york and have a family. A lot of jacob risss motivation in life is that everyone should have a healthy and safe, happy family like he does. He writes a lot about the welfare of children, in particular. He would tell his audiences theres no difference between these children or yours and mine. Thats the five children. There were other children that died young. So next were going to talk about what looks like a strange assemblage of equipment. Things that were not used to seeing these days. But this is photographic equipment similar to what riss would have used on his raiding parties that barbara described earlier. What we have here is actually a camera, a detective camera. This was a stealth camera. It could be used without a tripod. It could be held by the strap on the side, so it gave the photographer some mobility. And the other thing that was an innovation and sort of allowed for a lot of mobility at that time was the invention and introduction of dry plate negatives. Previous to this time, you had to coat a plate with colodian. It was a laborious process. You had to expose your yeg active right away. This enabled you to buy these plates already prepared. This is the size of the plate. This is the holder that we see here. You could carry a few with you and make a number of exposures in a particular outing. And what we have in the back is a flash pan. So riss learned about the german invention of flash powder in 1887. And hes very interested in it. He understands that he could be using this to great effect for his work, and the first as barbara said earlier, the first application of the flash powders would be put in a pistol. It would make a big flash of life. The flash powder holder was not that much better and very, very dangerous, but you would put the magnesium flash powder in the pan, probably take a fuse, light the fuse, and again it would go off in a big whoomph and you would have a big burst of life and enable the photographs that riss took in these dark spaces, that these spaces would be ilaluminum ace inned so that you would get some image on the dry plate. Theres also the question of how did riss use his photographs . He made the initial photographs between 1887 and 1892. That was the peak period of his photography. He used photography as a tool for his journalism. At the same time he was doing the lectures and showing them as lantern slides, he was also still a Police Reporters and his intent was that he would use these images to add illustrations of his articles. In this case, which is about him as a Police Reporter, we wanted to demonstrate how it would look when youve had a print of a photograph and how it would show as a line drawing in the periodical press. So what would happen is an illustrator would be hired. He would make a line drawing and then an engraving, and that would be printed in the newspaper. The reason for that was that thing to was not there yet to do half tones in the newspapers. They did make rather flat half tones that were in magazines and monthly journals for which riss also wrote as a free lance journalist, but it wasnt until the 1890s that the quality was good preproduction photographs. At that time riss stopped taking photographs and purchased photographs taken by other people. His original idea is to appeal visually and combine the image and the word in order to persuade people. Riss was hired to work as on the beat, basically, reporting crimes and anything that happened through the police department. For six years he was on night work where his Newspaper Office where we worked for the new york tribune, and we have a photograph from the library of congress checks of riss in the tribune office, which was at 301 mulberry street, right across the street from the Police Headquarters. Hes there with his friend and fellow reporter amos janson and riss is in the corner and anson is at the desk. He would basically follow the Police Whenever theyd get a call, a murder or a crime, and hed write about these stories. He got a lot of Human Interest stories from this. This is partly how he got access to the inside of tenement buildings. He was a recognized face. Many people thought he was a doctor because he came so often with the department of health or Sanitation Division when they were doing investigations of the ten ments and he would be with them. He was recognized. He reported for the newspapers but he also started doing Human Interest stories that focused on the conditions faced by the poor. Theyre the kinds of issues that were showing in the exhibit on the sidewalk, including housing and public health, public space, labor, immigration, and he wanted to expose how difficult the circumstances were under which the poor were living, especially did immigrant poor. There were over 138 charities active at the time that were dealing with the indigent and the poor in one way or the other. Encouraging philanthropists to enjoy things like lodging houses and to also work with the government to bring about municipal reforms. When riss went on the road he started off doing his lanternside lectures in new york city, but eventually he had tours all over the country in many different cities. He would travel with the lat earn lat earn slide. He would be paid about 150 to for his services and he traveled across the country. It was astounding. We do have his appointment books that show hed be in a different city every night practically. And so this is a very delux model, but again, he could have been using this. Its a stereoptican which allows one slide to fate in and one to fade out. There are other models that have just one lens. We have this in the exhibit at the courtesy of the American Magic lantern group. It was in in museum of the city of new york. Here we have a video running that is based on the one transcript we have of risss lecture. Out of o the alleys comes the problem of the children. This one came out to the alley just as she is here on the left. The hair was matted with blood and her whole body was covered with sores. The future of this child, can you read it in her face . I can. And after she had been in the care of the society for the prevention of cruelty for the children, thats not been heard since the moving stars sang together. You have seen the boys and girls and you have seen their homes. Here is the father of some such, so drunk that when we fired the photographic flash, he never woke up. This case is about his lecturing. The post cards show these ar been abused. Very serious subject matter but he lightened it up by telling a lot of jokes. Some of those jokes are not so funny to us anymore because theyre ethnic jokes and it were in humor that would been popular in vaudeville. I came across this tramp and i told him id give him 10 cents if he would let me photograph him. It was sitting down at which he was an acknowledged expert. We were talking about the way that jacob riss used his photographs and that he gave electrlecture lectures. One day when he was giving a lecture which he called how the other half lives and dies. There were two strifer ins. It came out in december of 1889 in their christmas issue it included many of the images. From that article he was asked to write a book. We have the First Edition of that in our case about him as a writer. The result of that wonderful meeting with exclusiveners was that jacob lists received a contract to write how the other half lives. He was still a Police Reporter at the time, and he wrote in the evening hours at home. We have a wonderful First Edition which was owned by Richard Watson guilder, who was a close friend of a scriveners ed for and also the head of what was known as the Tenement House Committee that was a Government Committee assigned to investigate the conditions of the poor, particularly the issues of sanitation and crowding in the tenement houses. Much to risss surprise, how the other half lives was a human bestseller. It came out in a time where stlfs a certain almointerest in photographs. Other people had written books that described conditions of the poor, but riss had a special story telling style and also an almost sociological approach to describing the different ethnic communities in the Lower East Side. One of the things he did was use statistics. He used statistics. And in fact, i had never read how the other half lives and i left hand to it as an audio book and it was astoupding, really, to hear a voice sort of illuminate his words. You realize, especially listening to it, how he was really advantage liesing for reform, for pdescribing these dark places he was bringing light to with his photography. Hes most effective, i think, when he uses statistics, when he talks about deaths on a particular bloc of children, thats when the power of his words really comes through. I also think that the power of the scriveners article was attributed to the artists they got to engrave his photographs in the magazine. So kenyan cox, for instance, is the artist translating his photographs. You see chinese opium den in the bottom. This is on the lefthand page. You know, one of the things that he was very concerned about were the very huge infant mortality rate that the guilder committee that i had mentioned, they referred to the rear tenements as slaughterhouses or infants. One out of five babies born in the tenements, special the rear tenements died in early childhood. When we talk about tenements, its not only that the buildings themselves were overcrowded. That many people couldnt even afford to live in the building. So where else did they live . They lived in dumps. They lived in the rear tenements that were built on to the back alleyways of often wood or brick tenement buildings. High mortality rates, and also the issues of public health, of cholera, diphtheria, typhus, contagious disease, also disease that was food borne or based on polluted water. One of the points of the statistics is how closely he worked with roger tracy and other individuals in the board of health. So it was a gothal connection for him in the municipal government to work with the sanitation engineers, the scienti scientists. It worked both ways. He got information from them in terms of statistics. They also got statistics. Here we have basically two major ways to see the material. When you come in the fronts you see the originals in the cases. And when you get to the back and turn around, you have a big surprise, because were showing some of the famous photographs in very large graphic size. One reason we wanted to do that is to show people at the lectures would have seen those images, and they wouldnt have been the small things based on the actual size of the Magic Lantern or the prints in the newspaper or the basically kind of crude illustrations that appeared in his articles, but they would have been these very large detailed images and people could really study and theyre life size. It helps people to identify with these other human beings that are the same as us. It helped put the empathy. Jacob riss was not alone as a reformer. He says himself i was only oneone thousandth of the solution. We dont want to portray the idea that he was singly the only person. Ing out these kinds of problems and urban decay and the way that immigrants were having to arrive to the United States. What was special about him is he was a very good publicist. The lanternside lectures helped with that. With the publication of the other half lives. So many people had their consciousness raised. He had some important allies in high places and there were many of them. We had only a little bit of space, so we chose three, and they are theater roosevelt, booker t. Washington and andrew carnegie. We have major collections of those people here in the library of congress. Were highlighting an image that comes from our prints and photographs image. Its a political cartoon and it is portraying what we would call Theodore Roosevelts kitchen cabinet. Its not actual members of the cabinet. They were his political allies and people he had relied on for advice. You can see jacob riss is the small figure in colon al uniform second to the left. Holding a hankie to his face. You can see booker t. Washington is in the doorway, so its sort of a metaphor for the civil rights status at that time and of him being welcomed to the white house by Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt is the only person in the picture thats not crying. So how did riss meet Theodore Roosevelt . And thats the story of his activism in, no. We have here in our case on allies the basic stories of the bromance between Theodore Roosevelt and jacob riss. They first met in 1894 when a new administration was elected in new york city that was a Reform Administration under mayer william strong. Its often described as the Good Government movement. In that one brief administration, a lot of social reforms that riss has been recommending as well as the other people in his network of reform were manifested, including better sanitation. One of the things that he was faichls for is appointing an engineer who created the white wings who were sanitary workers that wore pristine white uniforms and at one point paraded down fifth avenue as sort of an army. The relationship was the closing of police lodging houses. The way me met is mayor strong appointed Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commission and the Police Headquarters was right across the street from jacob risss journalism office. Theodore rose jet was already aware of riss. Jacob said he loved him the moment i saw him. They immediately formed a bond. They went about a night on these night raids so that riss could familiarize theodore with the neighborhood in terms of criminali criminality. They checked up on what policemen were doing. One of the slips for riss is the issue of using as homeless shelters. He had a good reason to have a grudge about police lodging houses. When he was a young immigrant and homeless, he sometime stayed overnight in homeless shelters and he tells the story of the a night when he was in particular despair where he had considered throwing himself into the east river and he was befriended by a stray dog. The dog was his only friend in america, and that night he went to stay at a lodging house. They wouldnt let the dog. The dog was waiting for him outside. In the night as he slept, a precious golden lockett that he brought with him to america was stolen from him while he was sleeping. When he reported it, the policeman didnt believe him. Why would this tramp boy have a golden locket, yeah, sure. He was rough in throwing riss out of the lodging house. The dog sees his friend being roughed up by the police and the dog snarls and the policeman beat him to death. Riss never forgot about that. He titled the chapter in his auto biography my dog is ave e avenged. A lot of younger people in particular were exposed to hardened criminals or recruited to be pick pockets or so on that it wasnt a wholesome environment for the young, but also there was a spread of disease. This particular article that were highlighting, police lodging houses are they hot bets for typhus. It shows a map lying on the floor. Hes very ill. Hes at the eldridge Street Police station and he did have typhus, so he uses this as an example of the danger of contagious disease to the people that are staying there, who then spread it when they left, but also to the policemen themselves. The police were concerned about this issue. So they succeed in closing down the lodging houses and the idea that the police are policing authority should have the major role in supplying homeless shelters, and riss believed that private charity should take over that role in partnership with funds, Charitable Funds to open a model lodging house that would have showers or ways to bathe, a way to wash clothes and a real bed for people to sleep in and so on. On the side walls we have paired the photograph attributed to riss with a Fire Insurance map from the paris and brown company. So each Panel Features one of these maps that locates where this photograph was or probably was taken. These maps state from 1880. Theyre brock by block what you can see if you are ensured is what the Building Material was made of. Yellow indicates wooden. Pink is brick. Green indicates that theres some sort of Fire Insurance hazard, whether it be because of what goes on in that building or Building Materials. But you can see where the Police Station is. The eldridge street station is in the lower right quadrant here or the lower right portion of the map. And also this illustrates what riss was railing against, which is that there was no light, no sort of air circulation in these structures, so if you can imagine that theres a window on the street side, but then you see there are buildings that are backtoback. Theres no light getting in. One of the re one of the reforms that happened was regulations to require that windows be cut through in interior rooms and there were some 40,000 windows that were cut through so there could be light from an exterior window like we saw at the 5 cent spot. That room had no vent las vegas and no light. So these films are taken by the Thomas Edison company and american uniscope and bio graph. Theyre dating these films in mar date from 19031904. And this is the fish market on the Lower East Side, on the righthand side, and you see a vibrancy that is really missing in the static images, in the still images, and it shows the life of the street, and i think that it adds a nice dimension, i think, to the exhibition. These date from mainly the 1903 era, so they are from risss lifetime, so it really is as he would have seen new york at the time. One of the things theyre showing like this particular one, men that are sorting things at the dump and riss did a famous article about men who and children there was a picture in it that says db called children of the dump who lived underneath the street there and other places. Part of what theyre doing is theyre sorting things out of the garbage that can be recycled for money. They sorted rags. The rags would be sorted to make paper. They got bones, cleaned the bones and theyd be used for baking powder soda. We had mentioned earlier that jacob riss came into fame during the gilded age and then he dies in 1914 during the progressive era and he had many friends that were progressive reformers, including lillian walt who was the head of the nurses settlement, also known as the henry street settlement in the Lower East Side. He became a particular patron of another house, it was the Kings Daughter settlement. We have in this section about his legacy something that he saved from that actually his second wife mary saved. Its from the jacob riss papers. He was a patron of the Kings Daughters group. A group of episcopal women following police inspect earnings. They had eventually purchased this property and he helped them doing that by giving lanternside r lectures. He continued to raise funds for its operation and they had a kindergarten. They offered nursing services. They had a playground in the backyard for the kids. It was a church based settlement house as he was a pious protestant. He was comfortable with the kmurchba kmurchbased house. Florence kelly had lived previously at whole house in chicago that was joined in 1889 and she had become a factor inspector for the state of illinois. She came to new york. She moved into the henry street settlement and she worked on child labor on the eighthour day for women and working womens rights. She was a leader of the National Consumers league and we have the papers of the National Consumers league here at the library of congress and we highlighted one of the articles that was written and published. The look of protection for hours and this particular was by lewis hein. Hein was hired by the Child Labor Committee to go undercover and basically do undercover reports. This was another risslike opportunities. He was doing expose. He went into factors and in the fields. Theyre now considered some of the most important documentary photographs of the 20th centuryd labor legislation. One important about this exhibit. Especially the kinds of issues that we emphasize on our side was about public housing, and public health. The status and attitudes towards immigrants. Wed like people to understand that they go back far into the 19th century. People grappled with them at that time. We continue to grapple with them today. And i think that reese would be a standing today to learn that he is best known for being a photographer. Not what he thought of himself as. I think this exhibit blasted the exhibit in new york, and im coming exhibits in new york. They are repositioning reese more like he saw himself as a communicator. The exhibition, jake, brees revealing how the other half lives can be revealed online. The library of congress website. Youre watching American History tv every weekend on cspan three explore our nations past. Cspan 3. Credit by americas Television Company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight we explore the american story with a look at the National Park service. We visited parks across the country. Including mount rushmore, summit to montgomery, National Historic trail, and gateway arch National Park, featuring a mixture of Natural Beauty and history. Watch beginning at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv every weekend on cspan 3. I would like to introduce myself. My name is sandra. I am a seasonal parng
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.