If I wrote in Jacob Riis' time, I'd be writing about teeming slums in our cities and kids dying of tuberculosis or outhouses in Philadelphia or kids losing their toes because they were living in homes without heat. He took on a battle in 'The Battle with the Slums' - and we won.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

I think I've read all of W.E.B. Du Bois, which is a lot. He started off with comprehensive field work in Philadelphia, publishing a book in 1899 called 'The Philadelphia Negro'. It was this wonderful combination of clear statistical data and ethnographic data.

Matthew Desmond Quotes