HST 202
On call paper #3
Dr. Smith
Riis did a great job in his essays explaining how it is commonly misconceived that the lower-class people
of society have only themselves to blame for being in the situations they’re in. Instead he bases his argument on how
the greed for money by the high-class members of society force the lower-class members to have no choice but to
live in the poor conditions as it may be the best and only form of living they can afford. In the first chapter, he
explains how the greed of homeowners led to high prices of rent for very smallest living spaces which has a much
larger effect than most would think.
The first topic we read about in chapter 15 is about the affects it can have on children. With such high rent
rates, most lower–class people couldn’t afford to send their children to school. With both parents gone at work, kids
were left home to feed, care, and entertain themselves until their parents returned home from work. A study Riis
mentioned is one that found higher crime rates with minors of poor urban areas. You could expect this because with
high rent rates there is less money to put food on the table causing children to have to find a way feed themselves
and is most cases the only way to accomplish that would be to steal it.
The next topic we learn about was the effects on women and specifically working woman. Because of high
rent rates, more often then not one income was not enough to support a family, which meant both parents had to
have jobs. In the early 1900s’, women were still not particularly “liked” by employers and they were often treated
poorly. Often, they could be found working 12+ hour shifts and getting paid fractions of what a man would make