Fighting for life

"New York's lower east side was said to be the most densely populated square mile on the face of the earth in the 1890s. City health inspectors called the neighborhood "the suicide ward" and referred to one particular tenement--in an official Health Department report, no less--as an "out and out hog pen." Diarrhea epidemics raged each summer, killing thousands of city children. Sweatshop babies with smallpox and typhus dozed in garment heaps destined for fashionable Broadway shops. Desperate mothers paced the streets to soothe their feverish children, and white mourning cloths hung from every…