At last the sixteen-day voyage was over. . "Land! Land!" Fouquet cried out, "Hurrah! Hurrah for America, my free country! I was jubilant. Everyone on board was jubilant. Oh, how relieved I was as our ship, the Tariffa, entered the port of New York during the night on 15 June, 1868 ."

Jacob Riis was a Danish boy who read cowboy books about America. So when he sailed for New York he expected to be confronted by buffaloes and cowboys. The first thing he did when he arrived was to take half his money and buy a gun. Later he said he was surprised to find New York "paved, and lighted with electric lights, and quite as civilized as Copenhagen." A friendly policeman saw his gun tucked in his belt and advised him to leave it home. Riis noted, "I took his advice and put the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. It was quite heavy to carry around."

Like many immigrants, Jacob Riis was very poor. It took him seven years to get a good job. It was as a newspaper reporter. He wrote about what he knew—the life of the poor in America's cities. Then he learned about photography. Most photographers took pictures of beautiful scenery or prosperous people. No one was taking pictures of the poor. Riis did . He showed exactly how some people had to live. His books helped get laws passed to make things better .

Jacob Riis and Carl Schurz were reformers. Some Americans, who had been here for a long time, had forgotten the nation's founding ideals. But the immigrants had come here to find freedom and opportunity in a land that said all men are created equal. They cherished America's ideals.