“Today three-fourths of the people of New York City live in…

“Today three-fourths of the people of New York City live in tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them. The fifteen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons call them home.”-Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890 The main idea of this excerpt from Jacob Riis’ book is that