Question

Excerpt from How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob A. Riis, 1890 The truth is that pauperism grows in the tenements as naturally as weeds in a garden lot. A moral distemper, like crime, it finds there its most fertile soil. All the surroundings of tenement-house life favor its growth, and where once it has taken root it is harder to dislodge than the most virulent of physical diseases. The thief is infinitely easier to deal with than the pauper, because the very fact of his being a thief presupposes some bottom to the man. Granted that it is bad, there is still something, a possible handle by which to catch him. To the pauper there is none. He is as hopeless as his own poverty. This passage would have been used for what purpose? (1 point)

📝 Responses
( ) to expose the corruption in government housing projects

( ) to convince the public that people in poverty need help

( ) to urge harsher penalties against paupers and thieves

( ) to argue that the poor are responsible for rising crime rates

Answer 1

( ) to convince the public that people in poverty need help

Reason: Riis describes pauperism as a product of tenement conditions—an environment that fosters poverty and makes it hard to escape—aiming to persuade readers that the poor need social reform and assistance, not punishment.