Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-22
By JOHN HUBERT GREUSEL

0OEL poor finally same "a n? t again m -,
courage for the long losing game.
His editors threatened him with
discharge unless he changed his style; he was too
editorial they said RiS, who is stubborn had
in his work. somehow he managed to inject into his
reports an Undesirable air of individual liberty,
checked but not nullihed by the policy of the paper
The fact is that the boss police reporters"
work was of that high type which, swinging away
from routine, contained large element that may
be defined as accurate observation, breadth, and
newspaper sketches lived finally in book form.
Whatever Riis may have done helper, his
victory in the slums of New York is monument
to the constructive power of Journalism, exempt
he'd by Kiss police work tor The New York
Tribune and later for The New York Sun
This Rs, the Danish lad, whose fitness for
Journalism was SO long questioned by men who for
the moment had the authority to direct his activi
ties, somehow, somewhere in the early days got
hold and chung ia to the idea that journalism might
be made wide field for the daily exercise of good
citizenship; and in addition to writing his
items, little by little he worked out and applied a
philosophy of society. In word, he called men
to account.
Behind all this is a mana stalwart man 1t
must be so, Riis would have failed; for there
many police reporters in America to-day, all doing
excellent work; but Riis somehow linked this days
work with yesterdays, and made to-day, somehow,
a footnote to So tell you that Jacob A.
Ris is bigger than anything he wrote. His
work is larger than his life; will keep on growing
after he has already been taken up by dozens
ways have made the Riis conception of brother
hood-that practical helpful commonsense brother
hoodthe basis of new social meanings, in directions
Ris dreamed of.
Riis was ready for hammer blows, and he also
dealt them, right and left. He had no sympathy
for the fat well nourshed 1oafers of the sums; but
for that best of reasons,-he himself had lived in
the slums, and the night policeman had ordered
him Move on!' from these very doorways.
The Hard School of Experience
WHAT dark days they were! The slum the
w first place in which Danish immigrant,
board in police lodging house He was poor, and
his luck was down. He glad, when night came,
to gnaw meat bones secretly handed out to him by
a kind hearted cooks helper through Delmonicos
back window; SO poor that at last, with winter
coming on, he found himself too shabby to get
job if had been offered-and you know what
that condition So he became of those
ghosts that you see under the lamplight. in the
dreadful panorama of low life, drifting from one
noisome Bowery lodging house to the next and
finding and all hopelessly bad. Then with
curse at mans inhu1nanities to the poor, Riis
started walking miles out in the country, anywhere
to get away from that human hellhole; striking
Job wheeling ballast railroad, peddling 1ut-
ing irons, trapping mink and muskrat; and los
ing again and again his few dollars; then out
cast sleeping in barns, with dogs swapping at his
heels; and one dreadful night, in heroic scorn of
mans ptiful ways, finding a bed on the smooth
fiat stone in cemetery, preferring, as he said to
rest with the dead than fight with the cold hearted
minded way that shows Rs's practical mind, he
added, And, you know, after shutdown stones
tain their heat for quite awhile.
Then back to the slunS, in spite of its miSeries,
and all the while sympa thzing with the of
others In these mysterious workings of Fate,
Jacob A. Riiss hfework was created for him; for
in the years he to be the living voice
that would speak for the slu1ns that refused to
house him decently; that stoned him, and starved
him.
All these facts he remembered when, later he
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