A.T. White
White is a Brooklyn man who, according to Riis, spent a great deal of his life building tenement buildings with a difference: they actually tried to address the social conditions which produce and worsen poverty. The author credits White with the construction of homes for more than five hundred families—at a time when families were huge—that also allowed the most dependable of tenants to actually share in the profits. Imagine that. Well, one has to imagine it because, frankly, it didn’t happen much then and it certainly isn’t at the top of construction moguls now.
Police Chief Inspector Byrnes
Byrnes warrants an acknowledgement in the Preface to the book for “much kindness.” Read that as equitable to Byrnes being a major source of information. It is through Byrnes and his long experience working the beat and the street as a detective that punctuates the book with interesting historical tidbits as well as such vital insight as the fact that the younger ruffians of the period were possessed of much greater “nerve” than the older guys they learned from; a reality made all the worse by also having accumulated more “ability.”
The Gangs of New York
The Paradise Park Gang. The Rock Gang. The Rag Gang. The Stable Gang. The Short Tail Gang. Riis writes of the heyday of the infamous Gangs of New York, though his story is centered a few decades after that told in the famous Martin Scorsese film. Although crime is naturally a centerpiece of poverty rows in any city, this is not a crime book nor is it—as might be expected—a pure indictment of those who fall into organized criminal behavior. Riis notes that he is in part writing about the “passing away of famous gangs from time to time. The passing is more apparent than real, however.” It is notable that gangs rise and fall in the city because that ebb and flow partly reflects the rise and fall of economic good times. While not excusing the gangsters, he does try to show that even this is a consequence of greater criminality: the tenement owners who are the opposite of Mr. White.
