Jacob Riis (blog 6)

Theodore Roosevelt began to notice Jacob Riis through his work showing the poor lives of the less fortunate mainly in the Lower East Side. Teddy introduced himself to Riis, offering to help his efforts somehow. Upon his visit to the presidency of the Board of Commissioners of the NYPD in 1865, Roosevelt asked Riis to show him nighttime police work. Roosevelt explored the gruesome living conditions innocent individuals were living in throughout the aftermath of the Civil War. During their first night tour, the pair found that nine out of ten patrolmen were missing... Which means only one officer was noticed to be on duty patrolling the extremely dangerous streets. One. Riis wrote about this for the next day's newspaper, and for the rest of Roosevelt's term the force was more attentive. If it wasn't for Riis the area could still have been highly gang populated, dangerous, and poor living conditions. 

Roosevelt closed the police-managed  rooms in which Riis had suffered during his first years in New York. After reading Riis' life journey stories, Roosevelt was so deeply affected by Riis's sense of justice that he befriended Riis for life, later stating,"Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted to call the best American I ever knew, although he was already a young man when he came hither from Denmark". (Wikipedia.org)

After Roosevelt became president, he wrote a tribute piece to Riis that said:

“

Recently a man, well qualified to pass judgment, alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as "the most useful citizen of New York". Those fellow citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City. (Wikipedia.org)

”

In return, Riis wrote a campaign biography of Roosevelt that praised him.