The Battle with the Slum was published by Macmillan in 1902, and it serves as both a sequel to How the Other Half Lives and a progress report on the reform movement that book had inspired. Twelve years after the first book’s publication, Riis could point to genuine achievements: the worst tenements had been condemned and demolished; the Mulberry Bend — one of the most notorious slums in the city — had been replaced by a park; new building codes required windows, running water, and fire escapes; and the political will to continue reform seemed strong.
But Riis was not triumphalist. The battle, he insisted, was never over — the forces that created the slums (greed, indifference, political corruption) were always at work, and every gain had to be defended against erosion. The book documents both the victories (specific buildings demolished, specific lives improved) and the ongoing struggles (new tenements being built to the same inadequate standards, landlords evading the new codes, politicians losing interest in reform as the headlines faded).
Riis’s prose in this book is more confident and more politically sophisticated than in How the Other Half Lives. He has learned how reform actually works — the coalitions, the compromises, the setbacks — and his account of the political process is valuable as a study of Progressive-era social change in action.
Collecting The Battle with the Slum
First edition (Macmillan, New York, 1902): Cloth binding, illustrated with photographs.
Market values:
- First edition, good condition: $40–$100
- Later editions: $10–$25