How the Other Half Lives ~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~ Name: ___________ Page:____

Directions: Visit each station, complete the activity at each one, and then answer the questions below.

Home - use both the pictures and the text to answer the questions
1. Lodging - describe the sleeping conditions in the
seven-cent bunkhouse and the 2-cent all-night
restaurant

2. Tenement - describe the living conditions in the

tenement
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3. Diary: imagine you live in a tenement. How do you

deal with living so close to others with no privacy?

4. Ventilation: the movement of air

draw a picture of a fan below, imagine living in a hot
windowless room with no movement of air

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5. Get a Post-It note, Pick one of the following, Stick

it on one of the pictures:
Summarize - What was immigrant home life like?
Question - What are 2 deeper questions that you
have?
Predict - How does living like this affect your health?

Work
1. Where do the cigar makers work?

3. Who works at making cigars?

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2. How long do they work each day?

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4. Describe the working conditions you see in the

pictures
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5. On a Post-It note write down one thought that

someone in the picture might have been having at
work. Put the Post-It note on the picture and copy
what you wrote in the space below:

6. How many cigars do they need to make to earn

$3.75?

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7. What prevents the old man from working as a

blacksmith?

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Child
1. What educational opportunities did young
2. Describe the picture of the two children in at least 2
immigrant children growing up in the tenements have? sentences.
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3. How old do you think the boy selling newspapers

is?
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4. The boy with the black eye told the investigator that
he was 16.
Write down how old you think he really was on a
Post-It and stick it around the outside of the picture.

4. What do his working conditions look like?

Why do you think he is working instead of in school?

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Home
Lodging - a temporary place to stay (like a hotel or motel) Lodger - someone staying at
a lodging
Usually the ten- and seven cent lodgings are different grades of the same abomination
(disgrace). A strip of canvas...without covering (blankets or sheets) of any kind, does for
the [bed] of the seven-cent lodger...It is not the most secure perch in the world. Uneasy
sleepers roll off at intervals, but they have not far to fall to the next [level] of bunks, and
the commotion that ensues is speedily quieted by the boss and his club.
In the United States, tenements housed the majority of new immigrants to the
country in the late 1800s. These buildings were cramped and poorly constructed. Often,
multiple families lived in the same apartment together to save rent, leaving little space,
and the buildings were poorly ventilated. Many also lacked water and basic sanitation,
and they were probably extremely unpleasant to live in.
Tenements may have been unpleasant, but their landlords were often worse.
Landlords would take advantage of new immigrants by charging high prices or
intimidating them, designed to keep the tenants from complaining or reporting
hazardous conditions. Fires were common, along with the spread of infectious disease.
Some of the worst tenements were in New York City, and many organizations
worked to create protections for residents and by passing laws, like minimum space
requirements, mandatory air shafts for ventilation, and basic plumbing for the purpose of
sanitation. Today, all construction in the United States is closely regulated, and people
would be hard pressed to find conditions as extreme as those that prevailed in the late
1800s.

Work
Men, women and children work together seven days [a] week in these cheerless
tenements to make a living for the family, from the break of day till far into the night.

Often the wife is the original cigarmaker from the old home (country where they came
from), [and] the husband having adopted her trade...because, knowing no word of
English, he could get no other work.
This room with two windows [and a] bedroom, is rented at $12.25 a month. In the front
room man and wife work at the bench from six in the morning till nine at night. They
make a team, [putting] the tobacco leaves together; then he makes the filler, and she
rolls the wrapper on and finishes the cigar. For a thousand they receive $3.75, and can
turn out together three thousand cigars a week. ($11.25 a week)
[A man] on the same floor has been here fifteen years, but shakes his head no when
asked if he can speak English. .... With $11.75 rent to pay... he has the advantage of his
oldest boy's work besides his wife's at the bench. Three properly make a team, and
these three can turn out four thousand cigars a week, at $3.75. ($15 a week)
when in winter they receive from the manufacturer tobacco for only two thousand, the
rent...has nevertheless to be paid in full, and six mouths to be fed.
He was a blacksmith in the old country, but cannot work at his trade here because he
does not understand Engliska.

Child
Interview between investigators and a little boy living in the slums.

Where do you go to church, my boy?

We dont have no clothes to go to church. And indeed his appearance...in the door of
any New York church would have caused a sensation.
Well where do you go to school then?
I dont go to school, the little boy said with a snort of contempt.
Where do you buy your bread?
We dont buy no bread; we buy beer, said the boy...His only bed was a heap of dirty
straw on the floor, his daily diet a crust [of bread] in the morning, nothing else.

Nothing is better understood than that the rescue of the children is the key to the
problem of poverty
...the inspector reported that he found only seven in the whole house (out of 300) who
said that they went to school. The rest got all the instruction they received running for
beer for their elders... They slept in the streets at night. The official came upon a little
party of four drinking beer...They were...good boys and proved their claim to the title by
offering him some.