“The special note of the medallions which are conspicuous among his
first productions is one of delicacy, and in the character of that
delicacy lies a source of strength which was from first to last of
immense service.” His touch was “at once caressing and bold,” and
he delighted “in giving a clear, even forcible, impression of the
personality before him. It is portraiture for the sake of truth and
beauty, not for the sake of technique.” In his work in the round,
the Adams memorial stands as his “one memorable effort in the sphere
of loftiest abstraction. His other greatest triumphs were won in
the field of portraiture.” In his studies of historical subjects,
Saint-Gaudens “struck the one definitive note, made his Lincoln or
Sherman a type which generations must revere and which no future
statues can invalidate.”
“People think a sculptor has an easy life in a studio,” he once
said. “It’s hard labor in a factory.” And often he remarked, “You
can do anything you please. It’s the way it’s done that makes the
difference.”
Such was Augustus Saint-Gaudens. To him America afforded an
opportunity; richly and many times over did he repay his debt to his
adopted land.
IX
JACOB A. RIIS
_Born in Ribe, Denmark, 1849_
_Died in Barre, Massachusetts, 1914_
There are many good citizens of the United States who can look back
with pride to their Danish ancestry. Denmark, that land of low-lying,
storm-swept coasts, and level plains, has bred for centuries a race
of hardy, freedom-loving people. It is only natural that America
should hold out to them a promise of even greater opportunity and
personal liberty.
On the bleak coast of the North Sea is the little town of Ribe.
There, in 1849, was born Jacob A. Riis, son of a schoolmaster and
one of fourteen children. Scant were the means for the education and
upbringing of so large a family; but from this humble home on the
Danish seacoast came a man who, in later years, was to become famous
in the new land of his adoption: famous, not because of wealth or
inventive genius, but for his citizenship, and for his deeds, which
left the world better than he found it.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Brown Brothers_
_Jacob A Riis_ (signature)]
There were no railroads or steamboats in Ribe in those days. It was
as it had been almost for centuries. And yet Ribe took pride in
its history: its people were a fighting race, fighters for honor
and liberty, fighters for the little of peace and security that
encroaching neighbors and unfriendly Nature had permitted them to
have. They had fought back the Germans in 1849, as they had fought
for their homes in years before. And every year, when the wind set in
from the northwest, they fought back the sea that rose up over the
low beaches and flooded the land as far back as the eye could see.
With such traditions and in such environment, it is small wonder that
young Jacob grew to be a healthy, normal boy charged with ambition
and energy. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it was the
blood that rises and fights against oppression and for the right, and
never for conquest or the subjection of the weak.
It was the ambition of the father that Jacob should study for a
professional career, but to the young boy, with his strong body and
alert mind, the study of a trade appealed more keenly, and he was
apprenticed for a year to a carpenter in the town.
But before the year was done, the boy’s ambition grew beyond the
opportunities of the little town, and, with the consent of his
family, he removed to Copenhagen to continue his apprenticeship
under a great builder in that city. Four years were passed here,
and during these years Jacob became proficient in his trade; but of
even greater value were the opportunities for study which the Danish
capital afforded him: study not only in books, but in men and in the
observation of the life around him.
One other thing drove his ambition steadily forward. In Ribe was a
fair-haired girl, the daughter of the wealthiest and most prominent
citizen. Wide was the social and financial gulf between the young
and penniless carpenter and the young girl whom he desired for his
wife. To everyone but himself his hopes seemed almost ridiculous in
their impossibility. He alone refused to accept defeat. If money was
needed, he would make it. If Denmark could not offer him success,
there was a land beyond the Atlantic that could.
He was twenty-one years old. In his pocket were forty dollars. It was
not much, either in years of experience or in wealth; but he had his
trade to fall back on, and, above all, he had “a pair of strong hands
and stubbornness enough to do for two; also a strong belief that in a
free country, free from the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as
of men, things would somehow come right in the end.”
From the deck of the steamer he watched the city of New York grow
large on the horizon. Ships of the world filled the blue harbor.
Tall spires of churches lifted above the roofs; wharves were alive
with activity. A static quality was in the air; he was filled with a
spirit of adventure and limitless opportunity.
In Castle Garden, at the tip of New York, where in years past the
immigrants were landed, a man was hiring laborers in an iron-works at
Brady’s Bend in Pennsylvania. The pay seemed good, and Riis engaged
to join the party which was being formed.
The work was hard, but Riis’s knowledge of a trade stood him in good
stead, and he was put at work building houses for the employees in
the foundry. Then from a clear sky came news which abruptly changed
his plans and the course of his entire life. France had declared war
on Prussia, and Denmark was expected to join with France and avenge
her wrongs of 1864.
Back to his memory came the love of his own country, of her flag,
and of what seemed his duty there. His brain aflame with patriotism,
he threw up his job and hurried to Buffalo, and from there proceeded
finally to New York. He had just one cent in his pocket; he had sold
his clothes and small possessions to buy his ticket.
But the Frenchmen in New York did not understand the young Dane who
wanted them to send him home to fight if his country needed him; nor
did those of his own countrymen whom he saw feel able to pay his
transportation on this patriotic journey. Again and again young Riis
offered himself. At every attempt rebuff or misfortune countered him.
It was useless to try further. Reluctantly he abandoned his hope to
join the French in their great struggle.
Winter was at hand. To the scantily clad, starving, and penniless
young man, the great city seemed to turn a cold and forbidding
shoulder. But opportunity does not come to those who wait expectant
of it: it is a prize to be won by struggle, and often by privation.
Opportunity is everywhere, but it is only the stalwart, indomitable
spirits who seek and seize it.
Hard days followed. From New York Riis went to Jamestown, a small
village in the northern part of the state, and there he spent the
winter doing such trivial jobs as fell to him, glad to receive the
small and irregular pay which enabled him to struggle on. For a time
he worked in a Buffalo planing-mill. Summer found him working with a
railroad gang outside the city. Then came the winter again, and with
it work at good wages in a Buffalo shipyard. Destined to be known
throughout the United States in later years for his social reforms,
and his virile writings for the betterment of his fellow men, in
these early days it was his knowledge of an honest trade that made it
possible for him to build the foundations of future greatness.
Two years later Riis was back again in New York. Among the “want”
advertisements, in a newspaper, his eye caught one which offered the
position of city editor on a Long Island City weekly. The probability
that a position thus advertised would be of small value was confirmed
by the salary attached to it. Riis got the position; the salary was
eight dollars a week, and at the end of two weeks the paper failed.
Three wasted years they seemed; three years of no accomplishment.
Then came the turning. A former acquaintance, casually met, mentioned
a job that was open in a news-gathering agency. “It isn’t much—ten
dollars a week to start with,” he said. The brief two weeks’
experience on the Long Island City paper had given Riis a slight
familiarity with the requirements. In the shadow of Grace Church he
prayed for strength to do the work which he had so long and so hardly
sought. Beside him his dog, his only friend in these dark days,
wagged his tail in encouragement. The die was cast.
The next morning Riis presented himself at the office of the New
York News Association. The earnestness of the young man appealed to
the desk editor, and despite his shabby clothes and thin, worn face,
he was engaged. From that time on the path broadened and mounted
steadily upward. He had begun his major life-work, a newspaper man.
A winter of hard work followed, but Riis kept his head and left no
stone unturned to take every advantage of his opportunity. By day
he gathered news about the city; by night he studied telegraphy. In
the spring he took another step forward, and his conscientious work
during the winter made it possible for him to meet the requirements
of his post.
Some South Brooklyn politicians had started a weekly newspaper. They
needed a reporter. Riis packed his grip and crossed the river. The
new job paid fifteen dollars a week. And two weeks later he was made
editor and his weekly pay was advanced to twenty-five dollars.
Then came another turning in the long, hard road. A letter from
Denmark, from the little town of Ribe, from the fair-haired girl whom
he had loved as a boy and for whom his love had grown through these
lonesome years, told him that she loved him. A few months earlier
this letter would have found him destitute, but now he was at the
opening of his career. All things seemed possible. With redoubled
enthusiasm he flung himself into his work.
By thrifty living Riis had saved seventy-five dollars. With this
small sum and with notes for the balance, he bought the paper of
which he was the editor. He was determined to succeed. “The _News_
was a big four-page sheet. Literally every word in it I wrote myself.
I was my own editor, reporter, publisher and advertising agent. My
pen kept two printers busy all week, and left me time to canvass for
advertisements, attend meetings, and gather the news. I slept on the
counter, with the edition for my pillow, in order to be up with the
first gleam of daylight to skirmish for newsboys.”
Once, impressed by the fervor of a preacher, he decided to throw
up editorial work and take to preaching. “No, no, Jacob,” said the
preacher, “not that. We have preachers enough. What the world needs
is consecrated pens.”
That determined him, finally. He would pursue the vocation he had
begun, but his pen would strive for the high ideal he had set before
him.
Local politics were corrupt, and Riis with his paper began a campaign
for reform. He was offered bribes; politicians urged him to cater
to them for the rewards they could offer. Then, when nothing else
could move him, they turned to violence. One cold winter night a
gang of roughs called at his office. Riis was working late. One of
the roughs, chosen by the others, entered the office with a club. A
minute later Riis flung him through the front window of the office
into the street. That ended the trouble.
In a few months Riis had paid in full the price of the newspaper
and had established it firmly on its feet. But the months of cruel
work had had their effect on him. He was badly overstrained. He
needed a rest. The doctors urged it. He knew they were right. With
characteristic rapidity of determination, he sold the paper for five
times what it had cost him, and with a snug sum in his pocket took
the ship for Denmark to claim his bride.
It was no easy life in America to which he brought back his young
wife. But in their small home they found in each other a peace and
inspiration that made all things possible.
Eager always to try his hand at something new, Riis purchased a
stereopticon and experimented with it in such small time as was left
from his long day of newspaper activity and his domestic cares. It
was to play a large part in his later life. “No effort to add in
any way to one’s stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in this
world of changes and emergencies, and Providence has a way of ranging
itself on the side of the man with the strongest battalions of
resources when the emergency does come.”
For a long time after the sale of the Brooklyn paper Riis had tried
to get a foothold on one of the New York dailies. His persistence
was again rewarded and the position of a reporter on the _Tribune_
was opened to him. Soon after came the recognition of his earnest
and conscientious work in the form of an appointment to represent
his paper at Police Headquarters. It was a hard and dangerous
job, which required cool nerve and indefatigable energy. But of
greater importance than the money that it paid, or the honor of the
advancement, was the opportunity it afforded the young reporter to
study at first-hand the conditions in which men and women lived in
the congested tenements of the city—a study which placed at his hand
the knowledge which later enabled him to become the champion of the
slums.
The police reporter on a newspaper gathers and writes all the news
that means trouble to someone—the fires, suicides, murders, and
robberies. The _Tribune_ office was in Mulberry Street, opposite
Police Headquarters. All the rival newspapers had offices in the
neighborhood, and among the reporters there was keen rivalry for
news. Naturally, the police did not help, for to be “news” it must be
discovered before it reached Police Headquarters, when all would know
of it. Friendships and detective skill were important factors. Each
reporter tried to be the first to get the news, write it up, and get
it to his paper. There was lively competition among the reporters,
for the man who got the news in print first had a “scoop” on his
rivals.
Out of this busy life of the newspaper man, Riis now began to develop
that interest which soon dominated his very existence; for from his
daily contact with the daily life of the city slums he drew the
inspiration to do his small part to better the conditions of the
lives of those around him. Small as were his first efforts, there was
soon inspired a veritable crusade in the soul of the Danish-American.
Not as a newspaper reporter, not because he won his livelihood in the
face of every difficulty, but because of his unselfish interest in
his fellow men is Jacob Riis great among Americans.
One day he picked up a New York paper and saw that the Health
Department reported that during the past two weeks there had been
a “trace of nitrates” in the city water. For months cholera, the
dreaded scourge that comes from impure water and has, in the life of
the world, killed more people than all the battles, had threatened
the city. Riis investigated. The water supplying two million people
must be pure. “Nitrates” were a sign of sewage contamination. The
city was threatened, and no one seemed to realize the danger. The
humble investigations of the newspaper reporter were to produce
far-reaching results.
Riis wrote an article that day for the _Evening Sun_, and advised the
people to boil the water before drinking it. Then, with a camera in
his hand, he spent a week following to its source every stream that
discharged into the Croton River. He found evidence enough: town
after town discharged its sewage into the water which supplied New
York City; people bathed in it; cities dumped refuse into it. With
exact details, and the evidence illustrated with photographs, he
returned.
The city was saved. So strong was the evidence that over a million
dollars was promptly spent by the city to guard the water-supply. The
real public-service life of Riis had begun.
In 1884, an awakened interest in the housing conditions in the
tenement districts came to a head with the establishment of the
Tenement-House Commission. It brought out the fact that the people
living in the tenements were “better than the houses.” Riis worked
heart and soul for the cause. Four years later the reform was
assured, with the backing of such men as Dr. Felix Adler and Alfred
T. White. The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed.
Now Riis turned to other conditions which cried aloud for reform. The
“Bend” in Mulberry Street and the Police Lodging-Room system needed
him. The “Bend” was a crowded slum that for a half-century had been
the centre of vice and misery. Riis aroused the community, and in
1888 a bill was introduced in the Legislature to wipe it out bodily.
To-day, a city park, a breathing-place and playground marks the site.
The Police Lodging-Room was another civic disgrace and a breeder
of crime. In these vile and filthy rooms the Police Department
gave night lodging to thousands of vagrants. The idea sounds well
enough, but the system was wrong, and Riis realized it. In these foul
quarters young men lodged with professional beggars and criminals,
and learned the ways of vice; in these rooms was bred disease,
physical as well as moral. Riis warned the city through his paper.
Then his prophecies came true: typhus broke out in the Police
Lodging-Rooms.
Slowly the force of Riis’s newspaper articles made headway. One by
one the rooms were closed. The Committee on Vagrancy was formed,
of which Riis was a member; and the same year Theodore Roosevelt,
later to be President of the United States, was appointed Police
Commissioner. That was the end. The reform was accomplished. For the
deserving poor, decent quarters were provided; the professional
vagrants left the city.
In the gloom and dirt of the crowded tenements the souls of little
children were shrunk and dwarfed. Riis was their crusader. Through
his paper he appealed for flowers—flowers from those who came each
day to the city from the country; flowers for “sad little eyes in
crowded tenements, where the summer sunshine means disease and death,
not play or vacation; that will close without ever having looked upon
a field of daisies.”
And the flowers came. Express wagons filled with them crowded
Mulberry Street; people brought them in great armfuls. Little
children, slovenly women, and rough men smiled and were glad. Riis
brought God’s country to Mulberry Street.
Then he turned his attention to the problem of child labor in the
“East Factories” of New York. Only children over fourteen could be
employed. But as there was no birth-registry, it could not be proved
that thousands of little children quite evidently years under age
were working there. Riis studied the problem. He found that certain
teeth do not appear until the child is fourteen. He went to the
factories and examined the children’s teeth. His case was proved.
With such evidence a committee was appointed and a correction of the
wrong was begun.
“The Public School is the corner-stone of our liberties.” The public
schools of New York were crowded, the buildings were old, unsanitary,
badly lighted, and many were actually dangerous fire-traps; dark
basements were used for playgrounds. There was in the whole city
but one school with an outdoor playground. Worse yet, there were
thousands of children who did not go to school at all, and of those
who did, conditions made truants of many.
Riis enlisted for this new battle. He took photographs, and gave
lectures showing slides made from his photographs, and he wrote
constantly in the newspaper. Slowly the playgrounds came, and modern
school-buildings more adequate to house the city’s youth.
It is an endless list of public-service activities. Instigated by
this foreign-born American, the reform of the greatest American city
was begun and carried far along its way. Unfit tenements were torn
down, parks and playgrounds were established, the whole school-system
was remodeled, the old over-crowded prison was condemned and a modern
one erected, the civil courts were overhauled; there was no end to
his warfare on conditions which brought death and misery to the
city’s poor.
A writer for a newspaper by vocation, Jacob Riis found in his pen a
strong power in his battles for reform. Throughout the latter years
of his life he contributed frequent articles to magazines, and in
1890 published a book which alone will long make men remember the
vital purpose of his life. _How the Other Half Lives_ tells by its
title its message to the world; it is the Golden Rule reduced to
modern terms.
“I hate darkness and dirt anywhere, and naturally want to let in
the light ... for hating the slum, what credit belongs to me?”
Unselfish, giving his all to the common cause, Jacob Riis is of the
noble band of great Americans. As he lived, so he died, relatively
a poor man. But poor only in worldly goods; for in the peace of his
home and the love of wife and children he found a priceless wealth
that gold can never buy. Many were his chances to profit by his work,
but his creed was to give rather than to receive.
There were worldly honors that he received. There was the golden
cross presented to him by King Christian of Denmark, and there were
other recognitions to be found in the friendship and respect of
the foremost citizens of the United States. But of all honors, the
greatest was the affection of the thousands whom he helped a little
nearer to the light, for whom he had opened windows in their souls.
No better advice has been given than this: “As to battling with the
world, that is good for a young man, much better than to hang on to
somebody for support. A little starvation once in a while, even, is
not out of the way. We eat too much, anyhow, and when you have fought
your way through a tight place, you are the better for it. I am
afraid that is not always the case when you have been shoved through.”
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 23 Changed: was named the Rocket, a stong well-built engine
to: was named the Rocket, a strong well-built engine
pg 89 Changed: taught to undertsand the worth
to: taught to understand the worth
pg 117 Changed: These watchwards of the Republic
to: These watchwords of the Republic
pg 150 Changed: The Alder Tenement-House Commission was formed
to: The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed