The slum is the enemy of the home. Because of it the chief city of our land came long ago to be called “The Homeless City.” When this people comes to be truly called a nation without homes there will no longer be any nation.
How the Other Half Lives together with its sequel Battle with the Slum reveal through Riis’s sensationalist prose and photography the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of turn-of-the-century New York City.
