The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-11
TWIN CITIES OF ITALY, RUINED IN
 QUAKE, REBUILD
After Seven Years of Hesi tation, Rehabilitation
 Begins.


 l NIessina. Italy. Oct. 1.-The twin cities of Messina and Reggie di Gala
 bria which were\ wrecked by earth quake ins 1908, are, after seven years
 of hesitation just now beginning to rebuild themselves along permanent Hines. Notwithstanding all the time that has elapsed since the disaster, i the Havoc still to be seen here is even greater than that in war-torn Ypres | or gutted Louvain. With few excep tions, evefy single house will have
 to be rebuilt from the very founda- tions A very few have been built al- Fready-the station, two hotels, the b building in which is lodged the royal
 earthquake relief commisson, 8 bank or two, a temporary hospital and the lccal building of a worldwide Amer ican concern. But the great mass of the people still live in the wooden barracks furnished them by the
 Americans who sprang to the rescue of the stricken cities-though already almost all have forgotten that these
 buildings came from America
 The barrack were splendid for their temporary purpose-easily transport
 e,I, quickly put up, comfortable, suf- ficient shelter and clean. But they were not intended for permanent habitations, and having been used fas| such, there is reason for the Querulous com p1aints of then8 so common among the natives The corrugated iron roofs catch all the heat possible and the wooden walls guard it and add to it, instead of spreading a ScoolnesS Of tfalr own as do strong. walls. Yer min lodge readily in the joints of the boards and it is impossible to clean tho wooden dwellings by simply slosh- ing a bucket of water over the interior which is the customary Italian way of cleaning their sone houses
 Worst Of all, the crowdipS necessi- -tated just after the earthquake by the limited number of accommo dations available has not been improved in seven years have added several more human beings to the lodging. It is lroba bly, the general spread of this condition that has finally forced the inhabitants of Reggio and Messina to Set about constructing themselves per mal1ent houses.
 With this enforced decision, a remark
 able advance in wages in the building
 trades has appeared. The fact that
 work has been seriously begun coin
 cident with the. war has only aggra- yated the situation-there are few
 men available to do the work, just when there is more work to do. It is an advance taste of what condi-
 tions will be all over Europe when the
 war is over and all the hundreds of cities of northern Frances Belgium, Poland Ga1icia, Serbia and Turkey
 have to be built again after the raw
 ages of war.
 In Sicily, every man who can clay i a brick straight or put aefew stones together with the, aid of cement has job ten hours day The average wage in the building trades4 which before the earthquake was no more
 than S1.25 to $1.5o day, now range from $1.75 to a$2, or even higher. Even unskil1ed labor, of which there 1 has always been excess, in Sicily~ at 50 to 75 cents per day, now com I 1nands> $1 to $1.25 merely to tear l down the walls.
 In spite of paying these higher wages, the building contractors are I making what, for Sicily, are fortunes. The contract to build a seven room | house runs to 30s0O0 ires-rough1y $6,000-and the stone is the volcanic stone found in every Sicilian field and | the cement with which, it is putF5to- : getlaer is delivered by boat within | easy hauling distance of the work, i at a minimum freight charge
 Among the few things left by the | earthquake in Messina, among bits of | carved stone walls of churches and graceful arches flung off into space, below a picture of the Virgin before which a candle still burns The in scription reads: tMessina rerne nbers with grief the terrible earthquake of. December, 1s94''-and the guarding Virgin looks out upon the whole hill r side, covered still with meaningless the shapeless debris of hun dreds of what were once homes, de- stroyed, annihilated. left without form of identity-the result of the earth quake years later than that of the in scription.
 And again Messina rebuilds!