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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Jacob Riis Biography RIIS, res, Jacob August (1849–1914). An American social reformer and author, born at Ribe, Denmark, May 3, 1849, and educated in the Ribe Latin School. After coming to the United States in 1870 he had a varied experience as carpenter, coal miner, farm laborer, cabinetmaker, traveling salesman, and newspaper reporter. In 1877 he was taken on the staff of the New York Tribune as a reporter stationed at police headquarters. Subsequently for many years he was police reporter for the New York Evening Sun. Jacob Riis was active in tenement-house and school reform in lower New York, and aided greatly in the movement which introduced parks and playgrounds in congested neighborhoods. In 1896 and 1897 he was executive officer of the Good Government clubs, and in 1897 became secretary of the New York Small Parks Commission. In his early days as a reporter Riis had become acquainted with Theodore Roosevelt, when the latter was police commissioner of New York, and thereafter the two were the warmest of friends. The results of much of Riis's study among the poorer classes were presented in his well-known volume, How the Other Half Lives (1890; new ed., 1903). Other works by him are: The Children of the Poor (1892; new ed., 1902); Out of Mulberry Street (1896), a collection of fiction; A Ten Years' War (1900); his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901; new ed., 1913); The Battle with the Slum (1902); Children of the Tenements (1902); The Peril and the Preservation of the Home (1903); Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizens (1904); The Old Town (his birthplace) (1909); Hero Tales of the Far North (1910); Neighbors: Life Stories of the Other Half (1914). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 5. |