Post Ragged Dick Readings

As cliche as the phrase is, a picture sometimes really is worth a thousand words. A photograph provides the audience with a more tangible source than letters arranged in disarray on a sheet of paper. While Ragged Dick and other primary sources from the Gilded Age are telling stories, they fail to capture the essence of the destitute poverty infecting New York City and account for its growing population of street arabs. Throw as many statistics at someone as you may please, however the mind is incapable of fathoming the extent of numbers and the importance they embody in contrast to the emotions which pictures can flood an individual with. Certain events in history, such as the stories of the poor in the late 19th century are best told not in words, but in film.

Although Ragged Dick is a tale of the rise from rags to riches, the life of Dick while he is in rags is almost glorified; the times appear rough, as indeed they are, but his consistent, merry attitude and perseverance can shadow the truth behind his situation. Words just can't do the time period justice. While describing the sleeping situations of the young vagabonds, "to sleep in boxes, or under stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter nights," definitely appears horrible to the audience, a reader will most likely be more indifferent to the passage, forgetting about it ten minutes later as they saunter off to participate in social aspects of their lives ("Homeless Boys," 143). However, seeing a photograph such as those which are in the edited version of Ragged Dick from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half lives, hits closer to home to the audience.

The above photograph speaks to me tenfold compared to reading about the corners and alleyways that the street children slept in (photograph from How the Other Half Lives). Actually seeing photographs of real children sleeping in a doorway on a metal grate will stick in my mind far longer than words describing the same situation will. Seeing living human beings suffering evokes empathy in the audience because witnessing the horrible situation makes it more real, more tangible and the reader is forced to believe that young children were necessitated to live in such desolate manners.

The supplemental reading to accompany Ragged Dick, "Street-Rats and Gutter Snipes," tries to provide readers with statistics on the age, gender, and nationality of a specific group of pick pocketers in New York City. Charts, like that one on page 28 illustrating the age of the thieves, do provide solid information on the statistics of the past, but charts and graphs and words alone don't do history justice. The mind can't fathom and process the number of kids actually left to fend for themselves and each other on the streets, just as humans can't comprehend the number of casualties from a war. We can read the number 20,000 or 3,000,000 and know that both are big numbers, but when we see hundreds of pictures of different kids roaming the streets of New York alone or we see a picture of hundreds of bodies piled in a mass grave, suddenly that large number becomes alive and we are humbled by it's truth and enormity. The incorporation of photographs in historical events makes the events which are occurring all over the world so much more intimate and tangible to the audience, and can speak many more silent messages to the onlooker than any essay or novel can.

Ragged Dick (Chapters 12-27)

Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, Jr. is the classic tail of rags to riches, presenting the idea that if someone is determined enough, motivated, and given some encouragement, they can rise from the unsanitary life of poverty to a lifestyle where such basics as food and shelter can be provided for. The majority of the audience reading this story in the 19th century would have been either the middle or upper classes, being as the lower classes held no education and were thus illiterate. In some ways it provided false advertisement of the poverty stricken citizens, giving them the impression that all poor people were as charismatic as the story's hero, Ragged Dick. The story can give inspiration to the lower classes, and to all of the nation's citizens of the time it stresses the idea that education if the key to earning a better living.

Opportunities to improve both socially and economically aren't handed out to anyone. Work needs to be accomplished to achieve greater status, and placing this labor in studies is the key to living more comfortably. With encouragement from a compassionate stranger and a few dollars to get him started, Dick is enlightened with the idea that through education and books, he can leave his occupation of a boot-black behind and become something more. Dick drops his bad habits of gambling and going to the Old Bowery to see plays and instead opens a bank account and spends his evenings expanding his knowledge through the help of his friend, Fosdick. When an ignorant man asks the boys how they spend their evenings, he is astounded at their response that they "spend [their] evenings in study" (93). He is naive to the heights which a higher education can bring someone and the money which studying saves from wasting it on drinking, gambling, and other such fruitful things, bringing happiness for a short moment in contrast to the lasting happiness which education can provide to both a  person's mind and spirit. The act of learning requires the learner to reflect on their morals and their "constitution" as Dick phrases it, as well as paving the pathway towards better standards of living.

With the rise of the industrial revolution, factories began replacing the jobs which had once required skilled workers to perform. Because of this loss of craftsmanship, in order to obtain a job which had a decent, steady pay, education was the the window of opportunity to achieve a higher status in the changing economy. Anyone could black boots or fill a space in the mundane factory, along with other simple jobs, but it took a greater mental capacity to obtain a steady paying job and move up the economic and thus social class ladder. When Dick saves a man's son from drowning, the man feels indebted to him and offers the young boy a job. The man offers Dick a clerk position asking " I suppose you know something of arithmetic, do you not?" (113). A year past, Dick would have had to answered no to this question, however with help from a kind friend as well as a constant motivation, Dick could proudly answer that yes he did know some basic mathematics. Similarly to the world today, the higher education a person could achieve and afford, the better his occupational situation would be. With a standard basis of knowledge in reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, Dick was able to secure a job which will aid in his elevation to a better lifestyle. Alger demonstrates to his entire audience that education is a very important aspect of every one's life, regardless to their class, if they wish to make something of themselves in the world.

One question I would have after reading this book would be about the reactions of the upper and middle class citizens who did read this book son after it was published, therefore more in context to their lives. I would like to know whether this helped to educate other people on the real lives of the impoverished or whether it provided false information in terms of the characteristics and personalities of the poor as well as possibly providing an unrealistic view of the idea of rising from rags to riches.