In Chapter 1, Riis takes the time to recount a recent case of landlord exploitation, lest people assert that such evils are of "a day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten." Riis utilizes his trademark verbal irony in this passage when discussing the landlord’s actions:
The fire made homeless ten families, who had paid an average of $5 a month for their mean little cubby-holes. The owner himself told me that it was fully insured for $800, though it brought him in $600 a year in rent. He evidently considered himself especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property.
In the above passage, Riis recounts the tale of a landlord who insured his tenement for more than he collected in rent, overcharging for residence in barely-tolerable living conditions. In the final sentence of this passage, Riis makes a statement that is verbally ironic, calling the landlord's tenement property valuable when he evidently considers it to be exactly the opposite. This statement brings to attention just how ridiculous and inhumane the tenement landlords are. Riis employs irony often when discussing the actions of landlords he deems immoral. As a literary device, irony proves effective at this goal: by introducing humor, Riis makes the landlord into a subject worthy of ridicule.
