How the Other Half Lives

Chapter 5, much shorter in length than its predecessor, repeats some of the ethnic generalizations of the previous chapters. The German, for instance, learns English “as a matter of duty,” the Polish Jew “as an investment,” and the Italian “slowly, if at all” (48). Furthermore, “[l]ike the Chinese, the Italian is a born gambler” (52). The main purpose of this brief chapter, however, as it is with nearly all of Riis’s chapters, is to depict the Italian immigrants as victims of greed, exploited by contractors and middlemen. A photograph (“In the Home of an Italian Rag-Picker, Jersey Street”) shows an Italian woman seated in her tenement, surrounded by barrels, buckets, and a few blankets, staring off into the distance. A ladder, which presumably leads to an upstairs bunk, stands nearby. The room appears to be approximately 8x10 feet. Violence abounds in the Italian slums. Riis concludes, however, by noting the Italian’s “redeeming traits,” such as honesty and loyalty (53).