- Speaking of immigrants, people don't like 'em in New York. They're described as stinking and lazy. Hey, that's not particularly nice.
- We meet Mameh, Tateh and their Little Girl. Mameh and Tateh are Yiddish for Mother and Father, and Little Girl is... well, you get the idea. Mameh and Little Girl work all day long sewing, while Tateh works in the street. When Tateh sees the places rich people live in, he gets angry. No big surprise considering his whole family basically lives in a single room.
- Little Girl has to enroll in school, and the family loses her income and struggles to pay the rent. They're so desperate that Mameh lets her boss have his way with her for extra money.
- Jacob Riis, the newspaper reporter, tries to bring attention to the condition of the slums where immigrants like Mameh and Tateh live, but no one pays much attention. During the summer heat wave, horses lie dead in the street while rats eat away at them, and the tenements stink of fried fish. Not exactly Paradise.