Jacob A. Riis lectures

              Lectures
Jacob A. Riis
EXCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT-
SLAYTON LYCEUM BUREAU,        STEINWAY HALL,        CHICAGO, ILL
A Man Who Has Done Things
The Methodist Church of Tilton, N. H., was crowded to-night by ?m audience that was iairly enraptured by Jacob Riis' story of "Tony's Hardships." This famous New Yorker, whom President Roosevelt termed the most useful citizen in New York, was engaged last spring for the Tilton and Northfield Woman's Club to give one of his lec¬tures, and not only the club members but the citizens of the entire community and surrounding towns had for weeks been early awaiting to-night's lecture. Delegations were present from Franklin, Laconia, Lakeport, Ashland, Meredith and other places, and all felt repaid for coming. — Manches¬ter (JV. H.) Union.
^ Jacob A. Riis, police reporter, evangel against darkness in modern tenements, spoke in Lewiston city hall Monday evening and left behind him an open book full of blazing lines and " pictures that speak." Mr. Riis has a remedy for the evils he depicts, and in this his reform is practical and pertinent. Tear down and build; clean and sweep; let in the sunlight. — Lewiston (Me.) Journal.
Thirty odd years ago Jacob A. Riis was what is called a tramp. He slept in police stations and even in graveyards, his best coat in the cold winter was a linen duster, he was hungry for days and was glad to tat a mess of bread and bones shoved to him through the alley window of a hotel kitchen; he suffered the misery of poverty and homeless-ness in city and country.
But all the time he was looking for work and the chance came to him to be a newspaper reporter, and what he did was done so well that President Roosevelt said not long ago: "Jacob Riis is the most useful citizen in New York."
It is a great climb from police station lodger to the most useful citizen in the third city of the world. A man who can do that is worth seeing and hearing, and 2,000 of the best people of this city came out through snow and cold last night to see and hear him.
The moment Jacob A. Riis grasps you firmly by the arm, looks deep into your eyes and begins to talk, you see why he succeeded in what he undertook. In his every look and word and act you see his chief characteristic, persistence — some call it doggedness — that bulldog tenacity that never lets go of an aim once started in upon until it is ac¬complished. And when you have heard him talk ten minutes you know he is a man of great ability and in¬dividuality.
WHAT HE HAS DONE
The things that Jacob A. Riis started in to do twenty-five years ago were to tear down the crowded tenement house of New York and put in their place small parks and flower gardens; to see that sensible tenement house laws were passed and enforced; to do away with police station lodgirg houses; to see that there were enough public schools for all the children of New York; to establish boys' clubs and girls' cooking and sewing schools.
When he began on that work there was scarcely a small park in all the great city of New York ; there were not schools for half the children; there were tenement houses in which 4,000 tenants were crowded in one block, many of them living in rooms in which the sunlight never shone, and thousands of tramps and criminals slept together nightly in the free police station lodging houses. To reform and change all that would look like a herculean task, but Riis did it. His only lever when he began was the pencil he pushed as police reporter on the New York Sun. But into  every story that he wrote of murder,  of poverty, of
starvation, of awful misery, of abuse, neglect and suffer-ing, he put his appeal for the betterment of the condition of the tenement house poor, for the parks, more schools and the rest. For twenty-five years he kept persistently doggedly, at it, and at last it came, the thing he had been working for through so many  ong years.
" Why were you so strongly opposed to the police station lodging houses ?" he was asked to-day.
44 Let me tell you a story," was his answer. "One winter night, years ago, when I was homeless and poor, I was driven by a storm to seek shelter in the Church Street police station and was herded in a foul room with other homeless ones. I had with me a little black and tan dog that I had picked up on the streets, homeless and hungry like myself. The dog was not allowed to enter. While I slej t I was robbed of a little gold locket fastened about my neck with a string. It contained a lock of my sweetheart's hair. I complained to the sergeant in the morning that I had been robbed, and he called me a thief and threw me out. The little clog was waiting outside for me. When it saw me in the grasp of the policeman it fastened its teeth in his leg. The man seized the dog and beat it to death with his club. The outrage of that night became the means of putting an end to one of the foulest abuses that ever disgraced a Christian country. The free lodging houses were an encouragement to tramps and ciiminals, a constant invitation to not work. A man who will not work must be deprived of the means of living without it, so I began to fight for free sleeping rooms."
HELP   FROn   ROOSEVELT.
" For twenty years I wrote, but it amounted to nothing until Roosevelt was made president of the police board and then I took him one night to that same police station, showed him the men sleeping there and told him the story of my experience twenty years before.
"' I've been fighting for twenty years to have those pest holes abolished,' I told him.
" * I'll smash them to-morrow,' said Roosevelt, and he did it."
One of the great things done by Mr. Riis was the tearing down of the Mulberry Bend tenement houses and the mak¬ing on its site of a park.
44 In my career as a police reporter," said he in his speech last night in the high school auditorium, " I wrote accounts, that I now recall, of seventeen murders in those tenements, and there were probably as many more that I have forgot¬ten. It cost $1,500,000 to pull the tenements down and put a park there, but that was mighty cheap. Since the sun¬shine moved in there not a murder has been done in that neighborhood and the police reporters are never called on to go there. Not because the people of those tenements moved elsewhere, because crime did not increase elsewhere, but because the causes of crime were removed when the sunshine came in."
Mr. Riis says bad boys and bad girls are not born, but made. He does not believe in the theory of heredity. All boys are good boys, all girls are good girls, when they beg111 life. They are made bad by environment and training. The children must have room to play.— From the Kansas City Star,
An immense audience absorbed every word.— Washington Post.
Interesting, instructive, amusing, pathetic.— Chicago Inter-Ocean.
JACOB   A.   RIIS
Lecture  Subjects
The Battle With the Slum Illustrated with a wealth of lantern slides.
Mr. Riis, while a police reporter for the New York Sun, carried his camera into the tenements and took the pictures himself. The lecture is the account of the fight for decent living conditions in the metropolis which has made Mr. Riis known throughout the world. In it he has been from first to last a factor himself, working shoulder to shoulder, or, as he himself puts it in the introduction to one of his books, "back to back" with Theodore Roosevelt when Police President in New York and governor of his state. Mr. Roosevelt called Riis f the most useful citizen in New York."
Mr. Riis does not carry a stereopticon outfit himself. The committees who wish the illustrated lecture will be required to furnish lantern and operator themselves. It is usually procured with ease from some local school or college which also has a competent operator. Mr. Riis brings the slides, which are the regular American size, unframed.
Tony's Hardships
Without illustrations. The story of the street arab who " throws stones," and the success of the efforts to tame him. The most fascinating presentation of the fight for "our to-morrow," as Mr. Riis puts it and insists that upon it rests the stability of the Republic.
My Neighbor A talk of  Social Settlements and the reason for their existence.
Mr. Riis is himself the head of the settlement that bears his name.
The Man Roosevelt A summing up of the greatest figure in present day
history by one who knows him as few do.
True Americans For schools and clubs especially.
Mr. Riis' Books
" The Making of an American " ($2.00).
(The Author's Own Life Story)
" The Battle with the Slum " ($2.00) . . "Children of the Tenements" ($1.50) "Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen" ($2.00) " Is there a Santa Claus ? " ($ .75) . . . " How the Other Half Lives" ($1.25) . . " The Children of the Poor " ($1.25) . . " Perils and Preservation of the Home " ($
.    MacMillan   Company,   New   Tork
.    MacMillan   Company,   New   Tork
MacMillan  Company,   New   Tork
MacMillan   Company,   New   Tork
MacMillian Company, New   Tork
Chas.   Scribner*s Sons, New  Tork
Chas.   Scribner's Sons,  New  Tork 1.00)  Geo. W. Jacob £s? Co., Philadelpha
The first  of Mr. Riis' books, "How the Other Half Lives," was printed fourteen years ago and caused an immediate sensation throughout the English speaking world.
The author became famous in a night as the champion of the poor in our cities and of the people's homes. " The Battle with the Slum " is the account of how the fight for the rescue of those homes had gone on, up to the last defeat of Tammany. It is the sequel to "How the Other Half Lives." "The Making of an American" was the literary sensation of three years ago. It is the author's own life story, and incidentally the story of the hand he has borne in the betterment of his great city, in which he began life as a homeless outcast in the slum he has since been waging relentless war upon.    It has been called the most inspiring book published in many years.
Never before in the history of the men's meetings of the Camden V. M. C A. was a speaker so heartily received and generously applauded as was Jacob Riis, of New York, yes¬terday afternoon. A native of Denmark, fifty-six years of age, the picture of health, with a smile that seems to draw you closer to him each minute, he instantly won hearty favor with his audience when he said, " I am looking for God in the image of my fellow-man."— Post Telegram.
Few men ever held a great audience closer than did Jacob Riis at the First M. E. Church last night, when he told the story, vivid in spite of its plainness, of his own " Battle with the Slum " of New York. All in all, it was one of the most remarkable lectures ever heard in Jackson, in spite of the fact that it was but the plain story of a very plain and unassuming man, who was ennobled by the consciousness of his great mission. The Outlook circle of King's Daughters deserves special credit for assuming the responsibility of bringing him here. —Jackson ( Mich.)  Morning Patriot.
A delightful lecture, the charm and the value of which, in the case of that delivered by Mr. Jacob A. Riis at the Col¬lege Street Church last evening, it is impossible to describe. A packed house greeted Mr. Riis* first appearance in this city ; and their absorbing interest in the man and his presen¬tation of Tony's hardships was shown in their free applause, ready laughter and as ready sighs. The man himself with his simple modesty, his quick humor, his magnificent enthu¬siasm, his overflowing humanity, is a personality which will never be forgotten, it is safe to say, by any one fortunate enough to hear him speak. It is easy to see wherein lies his success among the people of the slums ; his whole being radi¬ates—a more than friendliness—a brotherliness which reaches the hearts of even an audience of an evening and makes one re¬gard him like a personal friend. Mr. Riis speaks, not from notes but, to paraphrase his own words, from his head, his heart and his hands; so fluently, so rapidly do the thoughts come that the words fairly tumble over each other and from an apparently inexhaustible fount of supply. His talk lasted for but an hour and a half, yet so replete was it with knowl¬edge of Tony's hardships, his characteristics, environment and possibilities, so rich in ideas for remedying existing evils, that one felt on leaving his seat that he had absorbed whole volumes of new thoughts and new views of life.— Burlington (Vt.) Press.
The lecture, "The Battle With the Slum," delivered by Jacob Riis, of the reportorial force of the New York Sun, under the auspices of the Young Ladies' Society of the Con¬gregational Church, at the Grand Opera House, last evening, was one of the most instructive and yet entertaining ever given by a speaker in this city. It carried the more weight in that it was not founded upon hearsay or statistical reports. The speaker had verified everything by personal observa¬tion. — Oshkosh  Times.
The lecture was one of intense and absorbing interest.— Milwaukee Free Press.
The ladies of the Literary Union have done our com¬munity a good service in bringing Mr. Riis here to talk to us. — Editorial in Lewiston (Me.) Evening Journal.
An astonishing revelation of a vast field in the great city for Christian Endeavor.— Wdkesbarre (Pa.) Record.
An immense audience absorbed every word. — Washington (D. C.) Post.
The first local appearance of this admired philanthropist was rewarded by the hearty applause from another of the great audiences that attend entertainments of the Y. M. C. A. course. The address was worthy of a practical, success¬ful reformer. It was a plain, popular argument without artistic intention, save in its directness and its emphatic contrasts. — St. Paul Pioneer Press.
A study in black and white, light and shadow, .was encom¬passed in Jacob A. Riis' lecture at Liederkranz Hall last night. It was a telling exposition of the effect of environ¬ment on man. Some years ago Darwin, Huxley and Tyn-dall showed the effect of environment on the lower animals. Their teachings are accepted with reasonable complacency, yet it remained for Mr. Riis and his fellow workers to show that the law applies just as closely to human beings; tc show that physical conditions of darkness and filth infallibly produce like conditions of mind and morals. It was a sledge-hammer blow at that shiftless religiosity which brings the tract and forgets the bread ; which foolishly attempts to purify the soul without first cleaning and repair¬ing the dirty house in which it lives. — Louisville (Ky*) Commercial.