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For this work I did not feel that I had any especial fitness. I resolutely refused to accept the position, and the Mayor ultimately got a far better man for his purpose in Colonel George F. Waring. The work of the Police Department, however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it. The man who was closest to me throughout my two years in the Police Department was Jacob Riis.
"Well, then," I said, "the man who gave me the parrot story was you, Dr. Bryant." The Doctor sat bolt upright with a jerk. "No bad jokes, Mr. Riis," he said. "Who gave you the story?" "Why, you did. Don't you remember?" And I told how I waylaid him in the hall. His face, as the narrative ran on, was a study.
Jacob Riis describes Roosevelt's administration as introducing the Ten Commandments into the government at Albany, and we need hardly be told that the young Governor applied his usual methods and promoted his favorite reforms. Finding the Civil Service encrusted with abuses, he pushed legislation which established a high standard of reform.
The red-whiskered old Bolo soldier had a hand grenade in his pocket and Sergeant Dundon nearly shook his yellow teeth loose trying to make him reply to questions in English. And the poor varlet nearly expired with terror later in the day when Lieut. Riis of the American Embassy stood him up with his back against a shack. "Comrades, have mercy on me!
Whereupon my funereal friend marched upon the stage and calmly announced to the audience that he did not know this man Riis, whom he was charged with introducing, never heard of him. "He tells me," he went on with never a wink, "that he is the most distinguished citizen in the country. You can judge for yourselves when you have heard him." I thought at first it was some bad kind of joke; but no!
They have their calls, whistles, signs, rally suddenly from no one knows where, and vanish in the alleys, basements, roofs, and corridors they know so well. Their inordinate vanity is well called the slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor.
The vagrant, itinerant, vagabond, gadabout, hobo, and tramp, that Riis has made so interesting, is an arrested, degenerate, or perverted being who abhors work; feels that the world owes him a living; and generally has his first real nomad experience in the teens or earlier. It is a chronic illusion of youth that gives "elsewhere" a special charm.
Riis," he began stiffly, "I'm not going to judge you unheard; and, for that matter, it is none of my business. I have known you all this time as a sober, steady man; I believe you are a deacon in your church; and I never heard that you gambled or bet money. It seems now that I was never more mistaken in a man in my life. Tell me, how do you do it, anyhow?
It is something in the very heart and fiber of the man. Willingness to work, perseverance in work, and decision come under disposition to industry. Jacob A. Riis, Journalist, Author and Philanthropist.
William Booth, In Darkest England . It has helped to change the life of a large part of London. Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. i, pp. 185-303. On this side, the new concern for city conditions dates from the book of a newspaper reporter, Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives. It thrust the Other Half into such prominence that it has never been possible to forget it.
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