How the Other Half Lives: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Riis admits that the economy of the Tenth Ward and neighboring districts, home to the Jewish population, has remained a mystery to him despite intense attempts to figure out how it works. Jews have monopolized the business of making cheap clothing, he says. Through ruthless competition they’ve driven down the price such that it’s impossible for workers to make a decent wage.

Most of the work in making sweaters happens in the tenements, free from factory labor laws like a ten-hour work-day limit and child labor restrictions. Riis invites his readers to take the Second Avenue Elevated Railroad to the sweaters’ district, where one might glimpse into the shops, with half-naked workers ironing clothes by the window.

Riis recommends getting off at Rivington Street: it’s a Sunday evening, the first day of the week in Hebrew law. Up four flights of dark stairs in a Ludlow Street tenement, the smells of frying fish and cabbage pervading the landings, he reaches an apartment with five adults and three teenagers (who lie about their age) sewing knickerbockers or “knee-pants.” The faces are black with the color of the cloth; the teenagers glance around, but the adults seem unaware that there’s a visitor. The wife of the boss is instructing these newcomers to America in the trade. Riis goes over the workers’ weekly wages and the shop profits with her: he wonders how anyone makes a living, but she is ready with a list of exactly how much bread, milk, meat, coffee, and potatoes costs per week.

In the next room knee-pants are also in the process of production, of a still lower quality: the profit is only three and a half cents per item. Each floor here has at least two shops. Riis points out one more hopeful-seeming family: the husband and wife work together with their children and manage to save up money each week. But across the hall is a worker whose four children are too young to work, and can barely manage to pay the rent.

Back on Ludlow Street, Riis passes another double tenement owned by a Jewish politician who is also a liquor dealer. The cheapest apartment there is $13 per month, and barely deserves the name. One hallway is turned into a shoemaker’s shop: to crawl into bed he has to jump over the footboard.

Further down on Broome Street, another tenement is home to a number of different manufacturing shops inside. On the roof, three men are making boys’ jackets: Riis describes how the 20 cents for which they’re sold are divided among the sewer, ironer, finisher, button-hole-maker, and others. They are lucky enough to have a filling meal at lunch every day, reminding Riis of one Orchard Street restaurant popular with Polish Jews, where large amounts of food are ladled out for 13-15 cents. The major expense in this neighborhood, indeed, is rent, and still the overcrowding is severe—no privacy is to be found. And yet most prefer to live in dire poverty while putting money away in the bank each week.

These, says Riis, are the conditions that enable his manufacturing friend to boast of New York’s primacy in making cheap clothing. Riis describes a few unsuccessful tactics at raising standards of living here, but suggests that what first must be done is to teach immigrants English so that they can assimilate. As evening falls, Riis watches exhausted people step outside for a moment’s rest. A small, dirty baby tumbles off a tenement step and comes to rest on the stones, its head on his boot.