Seizing the Light, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER TWELVE Social Documents

 

 

 

AN AMERICAN IMPULSE: SOCIAL UPLIFT

Millions of European immigrants came to America in the nineteenth century looking for personal freedom and the opportunity to make a better life. Buffeted by a series of post-Civil War economic depressions, however, many were left jobless, hungry, and psychologically beaten down, barely existing in disease-plagued New York City tenements.¹ Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914), who came penniless to New York from Denmark in 1870, suffered the degradations of spending nights in police lodging for the homeless, when he was robbed of his gold locket keepsake and had his dog clubbed to death. Riis tramped the streets in search of work, did chores for food, and even walked to Philadelphia ...