Author Riis Jacob August

ded him to read (and improve his English via) Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper.[3] There was at least one preecho of Riis's later concern for the poor. At eleven or twelve, he donated a coin he had received for Christmas to a poor Ribe family living in a squalid house, but on condition that they cleaned it up. The tenants took the money and obliged; when he told his mother, she went to help.[4] Jacob had a happy childhood, but his first tragedy struck when he was eleven. His brother Theodor, a year younger than he, was drowned. He would never forget his mother's grief.[5] Although his father had hoped that Jacob would pursue a literary career, Jacob wanted to be a carpenter.[6] When Riis was 16, he fell in love with Elisabeth Gjortz, the twelve-year-old adopted daughter of the owner of the company where he was doing work as an apprentice carpenter. The father disapproved of the boy's blundering attentions; and Riis was forced to complete his apprenticeship in carpentry in Copenhagen.[7] Riis returned to Ribe in 1868 at age 19. Discouraged by poor job prospects in the region and by Gjortz's rejection of his marriage proposal, Riis decided to emigrate to the United States.[8] Riis went to the United States in 1870, when he was 21, seeking employment as a carpenter. He first took a small boat from Copenhagen to Glasgow, where on 18 May he boarded the steamer Iowa, traveling in steerage. He carried $40 donated by friends (he had paid $50 for the passage himself); a gold locket with a strand of Elisabeth's hair, presented by her mother; and letters of introduction to the Danish Consul and a Mr. Goodall (later president of the American Bank Note Company), a friend of the family since his rescue from a shipwreck at Ribe.[9] Riis disembarked in New York on 5 June. He was underinformed about the state of affairs, on his first day there spending half the $40 his friends had raised for him on a revolver for defense against human or animal predators.[10] This was an era of social turmoil. The demographics of American urban centers grew significantly more heterogeneous as immigrant groups arrived in waves, creating ethnic enclaves often more populous than even the largest cities in the homelands.[11] Large groups of migrants and immigrants flooded urban areas in the years following the Civil War seeking prosperity in a more industrialized environment. Twenty-four million people moved to urban centers, causing the population to increase eightfold.[11] "In the 1880s 334,000 people were crammed into a single square mile of the Lower East Side, making it the most densely populated place on earth. They were packed into filthy, disease-ridden tenements, 10 or 15 to a room, and the well-off knew nothing about them and cared less." [12] After five days, during which he used up almost all his money, Riis found work as a carpenter at Brady's Bend Iron Works on the Allegheny. After a few days of that he turned to mining for the increased pay, but quickly returned to carpentry. Learning on 19 July 1870 that France had declared war on Germany, he expected that Denmark would join France to avenge the Prussian seizure of Schleswig, and determined to fight for France. He returned to New York, and, having pawned most of his possessions and with no money, attempted to sign up at the French consulate, but was told that there was no plan to send a volunteer army from America. Pawning his revolver, he walked out of New York until he collapsed from exhaustion; on waking, he walked on to Fordham College where a Catholic priest served him breakfast.[13] After a short period of farming and odd jobs at Mt. Vernon, Riis returned to New York, where he read in the New York Sun that the paper was recruiting soldiers for the war. Riis rushed there to enlist, but the editor (who he would later realize was Charles Dana) claimed or affected ignorance but offered the famished Riis a dollar for breakfast; Riis indignantly declined.[13] Riis was destitute, at one point sleeping on a tombstone and surviving on windfall apples. Still, he found work at a brick-yard at Little Washington and was there for six weeks, until he heard that a group of volunteers was going to the war; he thereupon left for New York.[14] On arrival, Riis found that the rumor was true but that he had arrived too late. He pled with the French consul, who threw him out. He made various other attempts to enlist, none successful.[15] As Autumn came, Riis was destitute, with no job or, in view of his appearance, hope for any. He survived on scavenged food and handouts from Delmonico's and slept rough or in a foul-smelling police lodging-house. At one point Riis's only companion was a stray dog, who brought him inspiration. One morning he woke in a lodging-house to find that his gold locket, with its precious strand of Elisabeth's hair, had been stolen; he complained to the sergeant, who, enraged, threw him out and beat the dog to death for good measure. Riis was devastated.[16] The story became a favorite of Riis's.[17] One of his personal victories, he later confessed, was not using his eventual fame to ruin the career of the offending officer.[18] In disgust, he left New York, buying a passage on the ferry with the silk handkerchief that was his last possession, and by doing odd jobs and hopping freight trains eventually reaching Philadelphia, where he appealed to the Danish Consul, Ferdinand Myhlertz, for help and was taken care of for two weeks by the Consul and his wife.[19] Myhlertz sent Riis, now dressed properly in a suit, to the home of an old classmate in Jamestown.[20] Riis worked within Scandinavian communities in the west of New York State as a carpenter, also taking a variety of other jobs. He achieved sufficient financial stability to find the time to experiment as a writer, in both Danish and English, although his attempt to get a job at a Buffalo newspaper was unsuccessful, and magazines rejected his submissions.[21] Riis was in much demand as a carpenter, but a major reason was the low price that he charged. However, his employers exploited his efficiency and low price, and Riis returned to New York City.[22] He was most successful as a salesman, particularly of flatirons and fluting irons, rising to sales representative for Illinois. However, in Chicago he was cheated of both his money and his stock, and had to return to an earlier base in Pittsburgh, where he found that his subordinates he had left to sell in Pennsylvania had cheated him in the same way. He was again short of money, and while bedridden with a fever learned from a letter that his childhood sweetheart Elisabeth was engaged to a cavalry officer. But Riis managed to recover from his despair, and again returned to New York City by selling flatirons on the way.[23] Riis noticed an advertisement by a Long Island newspaper for an editor, applied, and was appointed city editor. He quickly realized why the post had been available: the editor in chief was dishonest and indebted. Riis left in two weeks.[24] Again unemployed and broke, Riis returned to Five Points. He was sitting outside the Cooper Institute one day when the principal of the school where he had earlier learned telegraphy happened to notice him and said that if he had nothing better to do then the New York News Association was looking for a trainee. After one more night on the streets and a hurried wash in a horse trough, Riis went for an interview, where despite his disheveled appearance he was sent on a test assignment: to cover a luncheon at the Astor House. Riis wrote this up competently and got the job.[25] Riis was able to write about both the rich and also life in impoverished immigrant communities. He did his job well and was able to move to editor of a weekly, the News. However, this newspaper, a front for a political group, soon went bankrupt. Simultaneously, and unusually, Riis got a letter from home, which told him that both his older brothers, an aunt, and his sweetheart Elisabeth Gortz's fiançé had died. Riis wrote to Elisabeth to propose, and with $75 of his savings and promissory notes, he bought the News.[25] Riis worked hard at his newspaper, soon paying off his debts. Newly independent, he was able to target the politicians who had previously been his employers. Meanwhile, he received a provisional acceptance from Elisabeth, who asked him to come to Denmark for her, saying "We will strive together for all that is noble and good". Conveniently, the politicians offered to buy back the newspaper for five times the price Riis had paid; he was thus able to arrive in Denmark a rich man.[26] After some months in Denmark, the newly married couple arrived in New York. Riis worked briefly as editor of a south Brooklyn newspaper, the Brooklyn News. To supplement his income, he used a magic lantern to advertise in Brooklyn, either onto a sheet hung between two trees or onto a screen behind a window. The novelty made a success, and Riis and a friend moved on to upstate New York and Pennsylvania as itinerant advertisers. However, this was cut short when the pair were caught up in an armed dispute between striking railroad workers and the police; Riis quickly returned to New York City.[27]