Jacob Riis was born in Ribe Denmark in 1849. In 1870 after not finding permanent work in Denmark he immigrated to the United States. After a number of years of working a series of menial jobs Riis landed a job as the police reporter for the New York Tribune. In 1890 Riis expanded on series of articles that he had written to publish a book called: How the Other Half Lives. The book chronicled the way the expanding urban poor lived. Riis combined photos with his text to bring to the story of the poor to life. The Success of Riis's book allowed him to devote full time to writing about the plight of the poor. Riis found a political ally in Theodore Roosevelt who worked with him to try to alleviate the greatest problems of the poor and reform city government. Riis died in 1914, one year after moving to a farmstead in Massachusetts.