SOURCE: An introduction to How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis, edited by Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1970, pp. vii-xix.

In the following essay, the editor's introduction of How the Other Half Lives, Warner discusses Riis's classic work.

This is one of the great books of American journalism. Published in 1890, early in the era of muckraking, How the Other Half Lives stands with Lincoln Steffens' Shame of the Cities (1904) and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) for its impact on its own generation and for its lasting ability to secure a reader's emotional assent to the vision of the author. Today the book is in continuous use by historians seeking evidence of our urban past and by all students of America's reform tradition.

With this book Riis succeeded in doing what every newspaperman dreams of. At just the right moment...