(1849-1914)
"THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN"
The intimate friend at once of "the children of the tenements" and of
Theodore Roosevelt, Jacob A. Riis was beloved by countless New Yorkers
for his gallant "battle with the slums," and for the message he brought
as to "how the other half lives."
From experiences that would have spelled permanent degradation to a man
of baser metal, he won the knowledge, sympathy, and inspiration that
made him one of the most exceptionally useful and exceptionally loved
of American citizens.
From "The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis. The Macmillan
Company. Copyright, 1901-'08.
The steamer _Iowa_, from Glasgow, made port after a long and stormy
voyage, on Whitsunday, 1870. She had come up during the night, and
cast anchor off Castle Garden. It was a beautiful spring morning, and
as I looked over the rail at the miles of straight streets, the green
heights of Brooklyn, and the stir of ferryboats and pleasure craft on
the river, my hopes rose high that somewhere in this teeming hive there
would be a place for me. What kind of a place I had myself no clear
notion of; I would let that work out as it could. Of course I had my
trade to fall back on, but I am afraid that is all the use I thought of
putting it to. The love of change belongs to youth, and I meant to
take a hand in things as they came along. I 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, and a man get
shaken into the corner where he belonged if he took a hand in the game.
I think I was right in that. If it took a lot of shaking to get me
where I belonged, that was just what I needed. Even my mother admits
that now. . . .
I made it my first business to buy a navy revolver of the largest size,
investing in the purchase exactly one-half of my capital. I strapped
the weapon on the outside of my coat and strode up Broadway, conscious
that I was following the fashion of the country. I knew it upon the
authority of a man who had been there before me and had returned, a
gold digger in the early days of California; but America was America to
us. We knew no distinction of West and East. By rights there ought to
have been buffaloes and red Indians charging up and down Broadway. I
am sorry to say that it is easier even to-day to make lots of people
over there believe that than that New York is paved, and lighted with
electric lights, and quite as civilized as Copenhagen. They will have
it that it is in the wilds. I saw none of the signs of this, but I
encountered a friendly policeman, who, sizing me and my pistol up,
tapped it gently with his club and advised me to leave it home, or I
might get robbed of it. This, at first blush, seemed to confirm my
apprehensions; but he was a very nice policeman, and took time to
explain, seeing that I was very green. And I took his advice and put
the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. It was quite
heavy to carry around.
I had letters to the Danish Consul and to the president of the American
Banknote Company, Mr. Goodall. I think perhaps he was not then the
president, but became so afterward. Mr. Goodall had once been wrecked
on the Danish coast and rescued by the captain of the lifesaving crew,
a friend of my family. But they were both in Europe, and in just four
days I realized that there was no special public clamor for my services
in New York, and decided to go West.
A missionary in Castle Garden was getting up a gang of men for the
Brady's Bend Iron Works on the Allegheny River, and I went along. We
started a full score, with tickets paid, but only two of us reached the
Bend. The rest calmly deserted in Pittsburg and went their way. . . .
The [iron works] company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it
cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too
shallow to work, seldom affording more space to the digger than barely
enough to permit him to stand upright. You did not go down through a
shaft, but straight in through the side of a hill to the bowels of the
mountain, following a track on which a little donkey drew the coal to
the mouth of the mine and sent it down the incline to run up and down a
hill a mile or more by its own gravity before it reached the place of
unloading. Through one of these we marched in, Adler and I, one summer
morning, with new pickaxes on our shoulders and nasty little oil lamps
fixed in our hats to light us through the darkness, where every second
we stumbled over chunks of slate rock, or into pools of water that
oozed through from above. An old miner whose way lay past the fork in
the tunnel where our lead began showed us how to use our picks and the
timbers to brace the slate that roofed over the vein, and left us to
ourselves in a chamber perhaps ten feet wide and the height of a man.
We were to be paid by the ton--I forget how much, but it was very
little--and we lost no time getting to work. We had to dig away the
coal at the floor without picks, lying on our knees to do it, and
afterward drive wedges under the roof to loosen the mass. It was hard
work, and, entirely inexperienced as we were, we made but little
headway. As the day wore on, the darkness and silence grew very
oppressive, and made us start nervously at the least thing. The sudden
arrival of our donkey with its cart gave me a dreadful fright. The
friendly beast greeted us with a joyous bray and rubbed its shaggy
sides against us in the most companionable way. In the flickering
light of my lamp I caught sight of its long ears waving over me--I
don't believe I had seen three donkeys before in my life; there were
none where I came from--and heard that demoniac shriek, and I verily
believe I thought the evil one had come for me in person. I know that
I nearly fainted.
That donkey was a discerning animal. I think it knew when it first set
eyes on us that we were not going to overwork it; and we didn't. When,
toward evening, we quit work, after narrowly escaping being killed by a
large stone that fell from the roof in consequence of our neglect to
brace it up properly, our united efforts had resulted in barely filling
two of the little carts, and we had earned, if I recollect aright,
something like sixty cents each. The fall of the roof robbed us of all
desire to try mining again. It knocked the lamps from our hats, and,
in darkness that could almost be felt, we groped our way back to the
light along the track, getting more badly frightened as we went. The
last stretch of way we ran, holding each other's hands as though we
were not men and miners, but two frightened children in the dark. . . .
[A short time later he learned of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian
War, and at once determined to enlist.]
I reached New York with just one cent in my pocket, and put up at a
boarding-house where the charge was one dollar a day. In this no moral
obliquity was involved. I had simply reached the goal for which I had
sacrificed all, and felt sure that the French people or the Danish
Consul would do the rest quickly. But there was evidently something
wrong somewhere. The Danish Consul could only register my demand to be
returned to Denmark in the event of war. They have my letter at the
office yet, he tells me, and they will call me out with the reserves.
The French were fitting out no volunteer army that I could get on the
track of, and nobody was paying the passage of fighting men. The end
of it was that, after pawning my revolver and my top-boots, the only
valuable possessions I had left, to pay for my lodging, I was thrown on
the street, and told to come back when I had more money. That night I
wandered about New York with a gripsack that had only a linen duster
and a pair of socks in it, turning over in my mind what to do next.
Toward midnight I passed a house in Clinton Place that was lighted up
festively. Laughter and the hum of many voices came from within. I
listened. They spoke French. A society of Frenchmen having their
annual dinner, the watchman in the block told me. There at last was my
chance. I went up the steps and rang the bell. A flunkey in a
dress-suit opened, but when he saw that I was not a guest, but to all
appearances a tramp, he tried to put me out. I, on my part, tried to
explain. There was an altercation and two gentlemen of the society
appeared. They listened impatiently to what I had to say, then,
without a word, thrust me into the street, and slammed the door in my
face.
It was too much. Inwardly raging, I shook the dust of the city from my
feet and took the most direct route out of it, straight up Third
Avenue. I walked till the stars in the east began to pale, and then
climbed into a wagon that stood at the curb, to sleep. I did not
notice that it was a milk-wagon. The sun had not risen yet when the
driver came, unceremoniously dragged me out by the feet, and dumped me
into the gutter. On I went with my gripsack, straight ahead, until
toward noon I reached Fordham College, famished and footsore. I had
eaten nothing since the previous day, and had vainly tried to make a
bath in the Bronx River do for breakfast. Not yet could I cheat my
stomach that way.
The college gates were open, and I strolled wearily in, without aim or
purpose. On a lawn some young men were engaged in athletic exercises,
and I stopped to look and admire the beautiful shade-trees and the
imposing building. So at least it seems to me at this distance. An
old monk in a cowl, whose noble face I sometimes recall in my dreams,
came over and asked kindly if I was not hungry. I was in all
conscience fearfully hungry, and I said so, though I did not mean to.
I had never seen a real live monk before, and my Lutheran training had
not exactly inclined me in their favor. I ate of the food set before
me, not without qualms of conscience, and with a secret suspicion that
I would next be asked to abjure my faith, or at least do homage to the
Virgin Mary, which I was firmly resolved not to do. But when, the meal
finished, I was sent on my way with enough to do me for supper, without
the least allusion having been made to my soul, I felt heartily ashamed
of myself. I am just as good a Protestant as I ever was. Among my own
I am a kind of heretic even, because I cannot put up with the apostolic
succession; but I have no quarrel with the excellent charities of the
Roman Church, or with the noble spirit that animated them. I learned
that lesson at Fordham thirty years ago.
Up the railroad track I went, and at night hired out to a truck-farmer,
with the freedom of his hay-mow for my sleeping quarters. But when I
had hoed cucumbers three days in a scorching sun, till my back ached as
if it were going to break, and the farmer guessed that he would call it
square for three shillings, I went farther. A man is not necessarily a
philanthropist, it seems, because he tills the soil. I did not hire
out again. I did odd jobs to earn my meals, and slept in the fields at
night, still turning over in my mind how to get across the sea. An
incident of those wanderings comes to mind while I am writing. They
were carting in hay, and when night came on, somewhere about Mount
Vernon, I gathered an armful of wisps that had fallen from the loads,
and made a bed for myself in a wagon-shed by the roadside. In the
middle of the night I was awakened by a loud outcry. A fierce light
shone in my face. It was the lamp of a carriage that had been driven
into the shed. I was lying between the horse's feet unhurt. A
gentleman sprang from the carriage, more frightened than I, and bent
over me. When he found that I had suffered no injury, he put his hand
in his pocket and held out a silver quarter.
"Go," he said, "and drink it up."
"Drink it up yourself!" I shouted angrily. "What do you take me for?"
They were rather high heroics, seeing where I was, but he saw nothing
to laugh at. He looked earnestly at me for a moment, then held out his
hand and shook mine heartily. "I believe you," he said; "yet you need
it, or you would not sleep here. Now will you take it from me?" And I
took the money.
The next day it rained, and the next day after that, and I footed it
back to the city, still on my vain quest. A quarter is not a great
capital to subsist on in New York when one is not a beggar and has no
friends. Two days of it drove me out again to find at least the food
to keep me alive; but in those two days I met the man who, long years
after, was to be my honored chief, Charles A. Dana, the editor of the
_Sun_. There had been an item in the _Sun_ about a volunteer regiment
being fitted out for France. I went up to the office, and was admitted
to Mr. Dana's presence. I fancy I must have appealed to his sense of
the ludicrous, dressed in top-boots and a linen duster much the worse
for wear, and demanding to be sent out to fight. He knew nothing about
recruiting. Was I French? No, Danish; it had been in his paper about
the regiment. He smiled a little at my faith, and said editors
sometimes did not know about everything that was in their papers. I
turned to go, grievously disappointed, but he called me back.
"Have you," he said, looking searchingly at me; "have you had your
breakfast?"
No, God knows that I did not; neither that day nor for many days
before. That was one of the things I had at last learned to consider
among the superfluities of an effete civilization. I suppose I had no
need of telling it to him, for it was plain to read in my face. He put
his hand in his pocket and pulled out a dollar.
"There," he said, "go and get your breakfast; and better give up the
war."
Give up the war! and for a breakfast. I spurned the dollar hotly.
"I came here to enlist, not to beg money for breakfast," I said, and
strode out of the office, my head in the air, but my stomach crying out
miserably in rebellion against my pride. I revenged myself upon it by
leaving my top-boots with the "uncle," who was my only friend and
relative here, and filling my stomach upon the proceeds. I had one
good dinner, anyhow, for when I got through there was only twenty-five
cents left of the dollar I borrowed upon my last article of "dress."
That I paid for a ticket to Perth Amboy, near which place I found work
in Pfeiffer's clay-bank.
Pfeiffer was a German, but his wife was Irish and so were his hands,
all except a giant Norwegian and myself. The third day was Sunday, and
was devoted to drinking much beer, which Pfeiffer, with an eye to
business, furnished on the premises. When they were drunk, the tribe
turned upon the Norwegian, and threw him out. It seems that this was a
regular weekly occurrence. Me they fired out at the same time, but
afterward paid no attention to me. The whole crew of them perched on
the Norwegian and belabored him with broomsticks and balesticks until
they roused the sleeping Berserk in him. As I was coming to his
relief, I saw the human heap heave and rock. From under it arose the
enraged giant, tossed his tormentors aside as if they were so much
chaff, battered down the door of the house in which they took refuge,
and threw them all, Mrs. Pfeiffer included, through the window. They
were not hurt, and within two hours they were drinking more beer
together and swearing at one another endearingly. I concluded that I
had better go on, though Mr. Pfeiffer regretted that he never paid his
hands in the middle of the month. It appeared afterward that he
objected likewise to paying them at the end of the month, or at the
beginning of the next. He owes me two days' wages yet.
At sunset on the second day after my desertion of Pfeiffer I walked
across a footbridge into a city with many spires, in one of which a
chime of bells rang out a familiar tune. The city was New Brunswick.
I turned down a side street where two stone churches stood side by
side. A gate in the picket fence had been left open, and I went in
looking for a place to sleep. Back in the churchyard I found what I
sought in the brownstone slab covering the tomb of, I know now, an old
pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, who died full of wisdom and grace.
I am afraid that I was not over-burdened with either, or I might have
gone to bed with a full stomach, too, instead of chewing the last of
the windfall apples that had been my diet on my two days' trip; but if
he slept as peacefully under the slab as I slept on it, he was doing
well. I had for once a dry bed, and brownstone keeps warm long after
the sun has set. The night dews and the snakes, and the dogs that kept
sniffing and growling half the night in the near distance, had made me
tired of sleeping in the fields. The dead were much better company.
They minded their own business, and let a fellow alone. . . .
[He found no employment in New Brunswick and after six weeks in a
neighboring brickyard he returned to New York, to be again disappointed
in an effort to enlist.]
The city was full of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employment
in a human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless and penniless, I joined
the great army of tramps, wandering about the streets in the daytime
with the one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that gnawed at my
vitals, and fighting at night with vagrant curs or outcasts as
miserable as myself for the protection of some sheltering ash-bin or
doorway. I was too proud in all my misery to beg. I do not believe I
ever did. But I remember well a basement window at the downtown
Delmonico's, the silent appearance of my ravenous face at which, at a
certain hour in the evening, always evoked a generous supply of
meat-bones and rolls from a white-capped cook who spoke French. That
was the saving clause. I accepted his rolls as installment of the debt
his country owed me, or ought to owe me, for my unavailing efforts in
its behalf.
It was under such auspices that I made the acquaintance of Mulberry
Bend, the Five Points, and the rest of the slums, with which there was
in the years to come to be a reckoning. . . .
There was until last winter a doorway in Chatham Square, that of the
old Barnum clothing store, which I could never pass without recalling
those nights of hopeless misery with the policeman's periodic "Get up
there! Move on!" reinforced by a prod of his club or the toe of his
boot. I slept there, or tried to, when crowded out of the tenements in
the Bend by their utter nastiness. Cold and wet weather had set in,
and a linen duster was all that covered my back. There was a woollen
blanket in my trunk which I had from home--the one, my mother had told
me, in which I was wrapped when I was born; but the trunk was in the
"hotel" as security for money I owed for board, and I asked for it in
vain. I was now too shabby to get work, even if there had been any to
get. I had letters still to friends of my family in New York who might
have helped me, but hunger and want had not conquered my pride. I
would come to them, if at all, as their equal, and, lest I fall into
temptation, I destroyed the letters. So, having burned my bridges
behind me, I was finally and utterly alone in the city, with the winter
approaching and every shivering night in the streets reminding me that
a time was rapidly coming when such a life as I led could no longer be
endured.
Not in a thousand years would I be likely to forget the night when it
came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me,
with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked
through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and
discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and
the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed,
and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined
ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed
with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage.
There was warmth and cheer where she was. Here---- An overpowering
sense of desolation came upon me. I hitched a little nearer the edge.
What if----? Would they miss me or long at home if no word came from
me? Perhaps they might never hear. What was the use of keeping it up
any longer with, God help us, everything against and nothing to back a
lonely lad?
And even then the help came. A wet and shivering body was pressed
against mine, and I felt rather than heard a piteous whine in my ear.
It was my companion in misery, a little outcast black-and-tan,
afflicted with fits, that had shared the shelter of a friendly doorway
with me one cold night and had clung to me ever since with a loyal
affection that was the one bright spot in my hard life. As my hand
stole mechanically down to caress it, it crept upon my knees and licked
my face, as if it meant to tell me that there was one who understood;
that I was not alone. And the love of the faithful little beast thawed
the icicles in my heart. I picked it up in my arms and fled from the
tempter; fled to where there were lights and men moving, if they cared
less for me than I for them--anywhere so that I saw and heard the river
no more. . . .
[After a while he fell in with some Danish friends and there was a
period of more prosperous times, including some experiences on the
lecture platform. Then came further adventures and finally]:
I made up my mind to go into the newspaper business. It seemed to me
that a reporter's was the highest and noblest of all callings; no one
could sift wrong from right as he, and punish the wrong. In that I was
right. I have not changed my opinion on that point one whit, and I am
sure I never shall. The power of fact is the mightiest lever of this
or of any day. The reporter has his hand upon it, and it is his
grievous fault if he does not use it well. I thought I would make a
good reporter. My father had edited our local newspaper, and such
little help as I had been of to him had given me a taste for the
business. Being of that mind, I went to the _Courier_ office one
morning and asked for the editor. He was not in. Apparently nobody
was. I wandered through room after room, all empty, till at last I
came to one in which sat a man with a paste-pot and a pair of long
shears. This must be the editor; he had the implements of his trade.
I told him my errand while he clipped away.
"What is it you want?" he asked, when I had ceased speaking and waited
for an answer.
"Work," I said.
"Work!" said he, waving me haughtily away with the shears; "we don't
work here. This is a newspaper office."
I went, abashed. I tried the _Express_ next. This time I had the
editor pointed out to me. He was just coming through the business
office. At the door I stopped him and preferred my request. He looked
me over, a lad fresh from the shipyard, with horny hands and a rough
coat, and asked:
"What are you?"
"A carpenter," I said.
The man turned upon his heel with a loud, rasping laugh and shut the
door in my face. For a moment I stood there stunned. His ascending
steps on the stairs brought back my senses. I ran to the door, and
flung it open. "You laugh!" I shouted, shaking my fist at him,
standing halfway up the stairs; "you laugh now, but wait----" And then
I got the grip of my temper and slammed the door in my turn. All the
same, in that hour it was settled that I was to be a reporter. I knew
it as I went out into the street. . . .
With a dim idea of being sent into the farthest wilds as an operator, I
went to a business college on Fourth Avenue and paid $20 to learn
telegraphing. It was the last money I had. I attended the school in
the afternoon. In the morning I peddled flat-irons, earning money for
my board, and so made out. . . .
[But there came again a season of hard times for him and the
Newfoundland dog some one had given him, and he had some unhappy
experiences as a book agent].
It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a
crust together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a
day's canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged
his tail persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead
against us, and "Hard Times" stuck to us for all we tried. Evening
came and found us down by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent.
Faint with hunger, I sat down on the steps under the illuminated clock,
while Bob stretched himself at my feet. He had beguiled the cook in
one of the last houses we called at, and his stomach was filled. From
the corner I had looked on enviously. For me there was no supper, as
there had been no dinner and no breakfast. To-morrow there was another
day of starvation. How long was this to last? Was it any use to keep
up a struggle so hopeless? From this very spot I had gone, hungry and
wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for whom I
wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company. Three wasted
years! Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had
not even so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Nothing had
gone right; nothing would ever go right; and worse, I did not care. I
drummed moodily upon my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life
was wasted, utterly wasted.
A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up, looking attentively at me
for his cue as to the treatment of the owner of it. I recognized in
him the principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my
money gave out. He seemed suddenly struck by something.
"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told him Bob and I were
just resting after a day of canvassing.
"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you rich. Now, how
would you like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do?
The manager of a news agency downtown asked me to-day to find him a
bright young fellow whom he could break in. It isn't much--$10 a week
to start with. But it is better than peddling books, I know."
He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he
said, with a little laugh. "I guess so. What do you say? I think you
will do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now."
As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and
got the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as
Croesus, it seemed to me. . . .
When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in a dog's drinking
trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and went with Bob
to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and
delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News
Association, up on the top floor.
He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the
early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk,
bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments;
and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row,
that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years
of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most
of the plays that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis,
it exercises the old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need
quickening, my point of view adjusting, I have only to go down to Park
Row at eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward and the City
Hall clock is lighted, particularly when the snow lies on the grass in
the park, and stand watching them a while, to find all things coming
right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on that
night.
The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out, the
first against which my name was written in a New York editor's book,
was a lunch of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was
the special occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in
it, but little else. In a kind of haze I beheld half the savory viands
of earth spread under the eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted
food for the third day. I did not ask for any. I had reached that
stage of starvation that is like the still centre of a cyclone, when no
hunger is left. But it may be that a touch of it all crept into my
report; for when the editor had read it, he said briefly:
"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning, sharp."
That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the Bowery
to No. 185, where a Danish family kept a boarding-house up under the
roof. I had work and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell
in a swoon and lay there till some one stumbled over me in the dark and
carried me in. My strength had at last given out.
So began my life as a newspaper man.