"Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters [Church Corner]"

At first glance, this photograph would generate a lot of sympathy and pity for the street children of New York, yet Jacob Riis in 'How The Other Half Lives' states that "it is a mistake to think that they are helpless little creatures, to be pitied and cried over because they are alone in the world...they were a set of hardened little scoundrels". Riis verbally paints a picture of a street child as "acknowledging no authority and owing no allegiance to anybody or anything, with his grimy fist raised against society", and with "sturdy independence, love of freedom and absolute self-reliance", we see him suggest that these "Street Arabs" embody several core American ideals, such as freedom and independence, despite being in a state of homelessness. This photo therefore shows that despite the hardships faced by immigrants in New York, even this young, they continued to battle and survive the poverty and dangers they faced in New York; which Riis explores my saying "the little ragamuffins sleep with at least one eye open, and every sense alert to the approach of danger: of their enemy, the policeman, whose chief business in life is to move them on, and of the agent bent on robbing them of their cherished freedom". This shows the discrimination against immigrants in America at this time, and lack of pity even on those as young as the boys pictured. However, Riis does also give examples of those who helped these "Street Arabs", such as "Children's Aid Society...lodging-houses". Regardless, they couldn't house every homeless child in New York, therefore there were always those left on the street, like those pictured above, highlighting the inevitable poverty of immigrants in America at the time.