Norwich bulletin., 1916-01-04


 there Is even greater than that in. war torn Ypres or gutted Louvain. With a few exceptions, every single house will have to be rebuilt from the very foundations A very few have been rebuilt aiready-the station, two hotels, the building in which is lodg- ed the royal earthquake relief com mission. bank or two, a temporary hospital and the local building of a world wide American 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 for gotten that these buildings came from America.
 The barracks were splendid for their temporary purpose-easily trans ported, quickly put up. comfortable. sufficient shelter and clean. But they were not intended for permanent hab- itations, and having been used as such, there is reason for the auere- lous complaints of them 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 coolness of their own as do stone walls. Yer min lodges readily in the joints of the boards and it is impossible to clean the wooden dwellings, by simply by sioshing a bucket of water over the interior which is the customary Italian way of cleaning their stone houses.
 Worst of all, the crowding neees- sitated just after the earthquake by the limited number of accemmoda- tions available has not been improved in seven years. Indeed, in many hcus- es seven years have added several more human beings to he lodging. It is probably the general spread of this condition that has finally forced the inhabitants of Reggie and Messina to set stout constructing themselves permanent houses.
 With this enforced decision, 6 re- naarkable advance in wages in the building trades has appeared. The fact that work has been seriously be- gun eoincident with the war has only aggravated 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 France, Belgium, Poland, Galicia, Serbia and Turkey have to be rebuilt again afteh rayages of war.
 In Sicily, every man who can lay a brick straight or put few stones to- gether with the aid of cement has a job ten hours a day. The average wages in the building trades, which DeIore the eartnQuake was no more than $1.25 to $1.50 day, now ranges from s1.75 to 8, or even higher. Ev- en unskilled labor, of which there has always been an excess in Sicily at soc to 75c per day now commands $1 to $1.25 merely to tear down the walls. In spite of paying these higher wages, the building contractors are making what, for Sicily, are fortunes. The contract to build a seven room house runs to 30,000 lires-roughly s6,000-and the stone is the volcanic stone found in every Sicilian field and the cement with which it is put to- gether is delivered by boat within 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