The twenty-five cent lodging-house keeps up the pretense of a bedroom, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large
enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes is the shallowest of all pretenses. The fifteen-cent bed
stands boldly forth without screen in a room full of bunks with sheets as yellow and blankets as foul. At the ten-cent level the locker
for the sleeper's clothes disappears. There is no longer need of it. The tramp limit is reached, and there is nothing to lock up save, on
general principles, the lodger. Usually the ten- and seven-cent lodgings are different grades of the same abomination. Some sort of an
apology for a bed, with mattress and blanket, represents the aristocratic purchase of the tramp who, by a lucky stroke of beggary, has
exchanged the chance of an empty box or ash-barrel for shelter on the quality floor of one of these "hotels." A strip of canvas, strung
between rough timbers, without covering of any kind, does for the couch of the seven-cent lodger who prefers the questionable
comfort of a red-hot stove close to his elbow to the revelry of the stale-beer dive. 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 tier of bunks, and the commotion that ensues is speedily quieted by
the boss and his club. On cold winter nights, when every bunk had its tenant, I have stood in such a lodging-room more than once, and
listening to the snoring of the sleepers like the regular strokes of an engine, and the slow creaking of the beams under their restless
weight, imagined myself on shipboard and experienced the very real nausea of sea-sickness. The one thing that did not favor the
deception was the air; its character could not be mistaken.
The proprietor of one of these seven-cent houses was known to me as a man of reputed wealth and respectability. He "ran" three such
establishments and made, it was said, $8,000 a year clear profit on his investment. He lived in a handsome house quite near to the
stylish precincts of Murray Hill, where the nature of his occupation was not suspected. A notice that was posted on the wall of the
lodgers' room suggested at least an effort to maintain his up-town standing in the slums. It read: "No swearing or loud talking after
nine o'clock." Before nine no exceptions were taken to the natural vulgarity of the place; but that was the limit.
There are no licensed lodging-houses known to me which charge less than seven cents for even such a bed as this canvas strip, though
there are unlicensed ones enough where one may sleep on the floor for five cents a spot, or squat in a sheltered hallway for three. The
police station lodging-house, where the soft side of a plank is the regulation couch, is next in order. The manner in which this police
bed is "made up" is interesting in its simplicity. The loose planks that make the platform are simply turned over, and the job is done,
with an occasional coat of whitewash thrown in to sweeten things. I know of only one easier way, but, so far as I am informed, it has
never been introduced in this country. It used to be practiced, if report spoke truly, in certain old-country towns. The "bed" was
represented by clothes-line stretched across the room upon which the sleepers hung by the arm-pits for a penny a night. In the morning
the boss woke them up by simply untying the line at one end and letting it go with its load; a labor-saving device certainly, and highly
successful in attaining the desired end. . . .. . . If the tenement is here continually dragged into the eye of public condemnation and scorn, it is because in one way or another it is
found directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths of the miseries of the poor. In the Bohemian quarter it is
made the vehicle for enforcing upon a proud race a slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the South. Not content with simply
robbing the tenant, the owner, in the dual capacity of landlord and employer, reduces him to virtual serfdom by making him become
his tenant, on such terms as he sees fit to make, the condition of employment at wages likewise of his own making. It does not help the
case that this landlord employer, almost always a Jew, is frequently of the thrifty Polish race just described. . . .
. . . Probably more than half of all the Bohemians in this city are cigar makers, and it is the herding of these in great numbers in the so called tenement factories, where the cheapest grade of work is done at the lowest wages, that constitutes at once their greatest hardship
and the chief grudge of other workmen against them. . . .

"How the other half lives" Was a important excerpt by Jacob. He was bringing attention towards the overall conditions and things that the (other)people who was the new immigrants etc dealt with. Instead of him being blind when it came to them, he exposed the reality of it. Overall it because of the american people as a whole mot really caring. The life as a immigrant was already hard with the process to even get here. Once they arrived they needed shelter and work so they took what they could get. Many families crammed in one little apartment and often had very little space due to work equipment and so many people inside. It was very smelly and not the most comfortable place to live at the time. They didn't have sewage or things like heat and air so that made things even worse. I think he chose