“What does that mean?” he asked of the chemist.
The reply was more learned than enlightening. The reporter was not satisfied. He carried his inquiry farther and discovered that “nitrites” meant that the water had been contaminated by sewage from towns above New York. Riis then took his camera and explored not only the Croton River to its source, but also every stream that emptied into it, taking pictures that proved in the most convincing way the dangers of the city. As a result, money was appropriated to buy a strip of land along the streams, wide enough to protect the people’s water-supply.
Another great work that Jacob Riis was enabled to carry through had its beginnings in that stormy chapter of his life when he found himself a vagrant among vagrants. He learned at first hand what the police lodging-houses for the homeless were like. At that time this charity was left in the hands of the police, who had neither the ability nor the desire to handle these cases wisely and humanely and to meet the problems of helping people to help themselves. Jacob Riis worked shoulder to shoulder with Theodore Roosevelt, who was then police commissioner of New York, to make the organized charity of the city an intelligent agency for relieving suffering and putting on their feet again those who were, for some reason, “down and out.” Many were brought back to wholesome living through the realization that they had “neighbors” who cared.
In the same way he worked for parks and playgrounds for the children. He saw that the city spoils much good human material.
“We talk a great deal about city toughs,” he says in his autobiography. “In nine cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose possibilities have all been smothered by the slum. With better opportunities they might have been heroes.”
Many honors came to Jacob Riis. He was known as a “boss reporter”; his books gave him a nation-wide fame; the King of Denmark sent him the Crusaders’ Cross, the greatest honor his native land could bestow; President Roosevelt called him the “most useful American” of his day. But I think what meant more to him than any or all of these things was the real affection of his many “neighbors,” especially the children.