1. Why do you think Jacob Riis titled this image “Five Cents a Spot”?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Correct. The answer is A. Riis called this image “Five Cents a Spot” because lodgers like the ones depicted in this photograph paid five cents per night for access to their sleeping place.
Incorrect. The correct answer is A. Riis called this image “Five Cents a Spot” because lodgers like the ones depicted in this photograph paid five cents per night for access to their sleeping place.
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2. In his book How the Other Half Lives (1890), Jacob Riis published this photo and many others that captured people living and working in similar circumstances. What message was Riis trying to convey with his photographs?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Correct. The answer is D. Riis’s photographs were intended to convey to others the miserable conditions in which poor immigrants and other poor urban residents lived and worked. His work was neither a condemnation of the poor nor a plea for a federal welfare state.
Incorrect. The correct answer is D. Riis’s photographs were intended to convey to others the miserable conditions in which poor immigrants and other poor urban residents lived and worked. His work was neither a condemnation of the poor nor a plea for a federal welfare state.
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3. What do these two images demonstrate about why Jacob Riis, as a reformer, was so excited to find out about the existence of flash photography?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Correct. The answer is C. As a reformer, Riis sought to give well-off Americans some sense of what it was like for poor people living in urban tenements. The photograph reveals so much more detail than the drawing that it makes a more compelling image and was much more likely to stir other reformers into action.
Incorrect. The correct answer is C. As a reformer, Riis sought to give well-off Americans some sense of what it was like for poor people living in urban tenements. The photograph revealed so much more detail than the drawing that it made a more compelling image and was much more likely to stir other reformers into action.
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4. About his process Riis wrote, “Our party carried terror wherever it went. The spectacle of strange men invading a house in the midnight hours armed with [flash] pistols which they shot off recklessly was hardly reassuring.” He spelled out the disadvantages of flash photography in his business, but how did this process create an advantage for him as a social reformer?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Correct. The answer is D. The element of surprise that Riis described served to counter any skeptics’ claims that he created the miserable scenes in his photos to make poor immigrants’ lives seem worse than they really were. Startling illegal tenants from sleep precluded any accusation that reformers were tampering with their evidence.
Incorrect. The correct answer is D. The element of surprise that Riis described served to counter any skeptics’ claims that he created the miserable scenes in his photos to make poor immigrants’ lives seem worse than they really were. Startling illegal tenants from sleep precluded any accusation that reformers were tampering with their evidence.
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5. Jacob Riis’s photography and publications were associated with which nineteenth-century perspective?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Correct. The answer is B. Riis’s work and reform agenda were associated with progressivism, which argued that human intelligence could shape and improve society. Riis took these photographs to show middle-class Americans how poor city-dwellers lived and convince them to support progressives’ reform efforts.
Incorrect. The correct answer is B. Riis’s work and reform agenda were associated with progressivism, which argued that human intelligence could shape and improve society. Riis took these photographs to show middle-class Americans how poor city-dwellers lived and convince them to support progressives’ reform efforts.
Understanding the American Promise 3ePrinted Page 595