How the Other Half Lives

How the Other Half Lives is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York at the end of the 19th century had to endure, when as many as 300,000 people per square mile were crowded into the tenements of the Lower East Side. Riis, who as an immigrant himself lived in these tenements for years, exposed the horrible conditions while working as a reporter for the New York Tribune.