Refugee Camp in the Piazza Vittoria.
Refugee Camp in the Piazza Vittoria.
Refugee Camp in the Piazza Vittoria.
Miss Davis had now the money to carry out her plans. But she had to face a new difficulty—the jealousy of the local artisans, who resented any influx of labor. Miss Davis began with the shoemakers because shoes, next to underwear, were the articles of clothing most needed by the refugees. She found a number of shoemakers among the refugees. These she induced the local shoemakers to employ by offering the following advantageous terms: The local man was to supply the materials and tools and to receive the price of the product, which Miss Davis promised to buy. She was also to pay wages to the refugee worker. Thus the refugee was employed, the local shoemaker profited and the stock of shoes was increased. At a later date Miss Davis found employment for all the carpenters, masons and painters among the refugees by paying them to complete a large two-story building, of which only one story had been built. When finished the building became an orphan asylum for seventy-five refugee children. The money for this work was furnished by Mr. Billings out of the Massachusetts funds.
So far only skilled laborers had been employed. But the persons who most needed work, those who deteriorated most rapidly when idle,were the common unskilled laborers belonging to the lowest classes. Even in their normal condition nothing but hunger would induce these people to work; now they were fed and were in a state of moral inertia. Miss Davis’ proposal to the Mayor to employ a squad of sixty day laborers in improving the roads seemed almost certain to fail. The Mayor, however, decided to make the attempt; he was to supply tools, materials and supervision; Miss Davis was to pay the wages. Once more the unexpected happened; the men worked moderately well at first, then better every day. In a short time all traces of idleness and discontent had disappeared.
From the point of view of actual achievement and also of example Miss Davis’ feat at Syracuse seems to me the most important single contribution to the problem of rehabilitating the sufferers from the Messina earthquake. Her efforts were not limited, however, to giving employment. With funds allotted by theBayernCommittee she opened a pension or home for forty-two refugees of the better class, giving preference to convalescents from the hospitals. Here for the first time the refugees found soap, brushes, combs, clean clothes, all the articles of first necessity of which they had been deprived since the earthquake. The home was so successful that the Marchesa di Rudini devoted most of the American money which had been given her, to spend at her discretion, to founding two similar institutions at Nolo and Avola, small towns of the province of Syracuse. These homes the Prefect of Syracuse promised to support out of Government funds when the original donations should be spent. In Miss Davis’ home at Syracuse the moral health of the inmates was never forgotten. Before the home had been opened a fortnight the women among the inmates were busy making clothes, voluntarily and without pay, for less fortunate refugees. Every scheme of Miss Davis served a double end—practical utility and moral rehabilitation.
Upon my return to Catania I found theBayernready to start for Reggio. During her stay she had not only dispensed relief to Catania and the environs, but had also supplied the wants of the Taormina and Giardini hospitals.
Of our second visit to Reggio I need say little. It was the saddest place of any, perhaps; nowhere else were the inhabitants plunged in such a state of complete dejection. There were no adventurers or imposters at Reggio: only the remains of families, sitting or standing mournfully among the ruins of their own homes. There was no danger in giving money to these people; their need was too obvious, their distress too genuine. We distributed our cargo, gave what help we could, paid a second visit to Messina and after two days proceeded to Palermo.
Conditions at Palermo were only less desperate than at Catania. The refugees numbered about 11,000, of whom about 900 were in the hospitals. Nearly all of the remainder were in refuges, very few having been taken into private houses. All the barracks, the prison, half the schools, several convents, several theaters, and even a number of churches had been turned into refuges, of which the largest held as many as a thousand inmates. The city is larger than Catania, with more wealthyresidents; it was therefore better off in many respects. But it suffered, like Catania, from the want of money from the outside, from the scarcity of intelligent workers, and from the particular dangers connected with the refuges.
I have already described the refuge system. If work is necessary for all the refugees, it is particularly necessary for those who live in these large communities. At Palermo their idleness had already turned to dangerous discontent. They complained constantly of their treatment, but refused to leave the refuges. No work for them had been organized when we arrived at Palermo. Enlightened by Miss Davis’ example, we immediately offered money for the institution of workshops on the same model as hers. The idea met with general approval. A beginning was made at once in one of the barracks and in the prison. Mr. Bishop, the American Consul, to whom we handed over the money for the enterprise, labored energetically to broaden the basis and extend the scope of the work. In a few days a ladies’ committee, of which the president was Mrs. Bishop and the vice-president Countess Mazza, wife of the General in Command at Messina, had founded workshops in five of the principal refuges, and another refuge, the Caserna Garibaldi, was organized on the same system by a parish priest, Father Trupiano, with the approval of the Archbishop of Palermo. According to the latest reports the Palermo workshops have been a success, like those of Syracuse. Some concessions had to be made to the inferior moral condition of the workers at the time when they were first employed. For instance, they had to be paid by the piece instead of by the day. But they have not proved idle on the whole, and such work as they have done has contributed directly to a most important object—the increase of the supply of clothing. Even if theBayerncommittee had not been able to distribute 1,200 mattresses and 15 tons of food at Palermo, or to assist the municipal charities, their short visit of eight hours to the city would have been amply justified by the foundation of these workshops. With the cruise of theBayernended my direct participation in the work of relief. I have only a second-hand knowledge of the many other undertakings of the American Red Cross in Italy. But I have seen enough to have formed a few general opinions which may have a certain interest for Americans who have contributed to the various relief funds.
The Italian government and the Italian Red Cross found themselves, within a few days of the earthquake, in possession of enormous sums of money. As the government had the sole access to the afflicted districts and the sole authentic information about their needs, it was to the government that all contributions, Italian and foreign, were naturally sent. But there were several reasons why the government could not immediately turn that money over to the persons who most needed it or who could use it best.
In the first place, every consideration had to give place during the early days before the imperative necessity of transporting troops to the scene of disaster and of supplying them with the necessary food and equipment. In the second place, government funds are always particularly hard to protect from the suspicion of maladministration. The Italian government may have remembered criticisms of the way in which former funds had been distributed: at any rate, it determined onthis occasion to exercise all possible vigilance to prevent the waste or misappropriation of a penny. The distrust of the Sicilians, traditional in upper Italy, may have increased the tendency to send supplies rather than money, and to give all orders from a single central source. In the third place, the temporary feeding and clothing of the destitute was a very small part of the total relief problem. The end which the contributions must ultimately subserve was to restore the refugee population to some kind of normal life, not merely to keep them alive for a few months. But how to effect their rehabilitation was a question which could not be answered until many things were known; their numbers, for instance, the possibility of rebuilding the ruined towns, the amount of property recoverable, the condition of the harbors, channels, docks—a hundred facts which only time could reveal. Whenever a general scheme should be devised, vast sums would be required for its effectuation: till then it was important not to disperse the accumulating contributions.
This policy of prudence and circumspection, admirable as regards an ultimate settlement, was defective as a means of relieving immediately the wants of scattered localities spread over two large and more or less inaccessible regions. What was wanted in order to supply so many needs in so many places was a system of extreme decentralization, with large funds at the unfettered discretion of individual agents. Such a system was incompatible with the rigid supervision of expenditure which the government felt to be necessary. It could not be adopted by the government. But precisely for that reason it could be adopted with advantage by independent and especially by foreign relief societies. By giving all their contributions to the Italian central committee they would indeed be helping in the general plan of rehabilitation which the central committee was evolving, but they would not be doing the task for which they were especially fitted and from which the central committee was to a large extent excluded. If, on the other hand, they entrusted their funds to agents in Sicily or Calabria, whose duty it should be to investigate every town and every institution and to help quickly the most useful and the most needy organizations, they would be doing what no one else could do so well, and what no one else had done at all.
The objection to such a policy was the risk of giving just offense to the Italian government and people by interfering in what was essentially an Italian concern—a problem of internal administration. Such an objection appears to me to rest as a misconception. The Italians might well resent, and would very likely have resented, any interference which took the form of independent relief organizations, with direct pecuniary assistance of individuals. As a matter of fact, the German Red Cross hospital at Syracuse was an organization of this kind and it aroused nothing but enthusiasm. A hospital, however, is not like a distributing agency. What the Italians would have objected to, and rightly, would have been any attempt on the part of foreigners to decide Italian questions; how a given body of men should be employed, where certain orphans should be sent, what families should first be assisted; or to set up independent relief bureaus to which individuals might apply, thus duplicating or confusing the work of the Italians and opening an easy way to imposters. But there could be no objection, and there was none, to selective gifts by foreigners to Italian institutions. Such distributions could not possibly conflict with the official scheme of relief, for all the charitable institutions of every city were under the control of the prefect or of the mayor. Certainly during my experience in Sicily no hintwas ever given that gifts to the hospitals, refuges or volunteer committees were less acceptable than gifts to the prefect or the mayor. I think it is safe to assert that neither theBayernnor any other American relief expedition in Sicily or Calabria has at any time given umbrage to any local authority. The central authorities at Rome, meanwhile, have done everything to assist and encourage the independent American expeditions. TheBayernwas organized according to the advice of the government and with its approbation. Mr. Billings, before starting for Sicily to distribute the Massachusetts funds, consulted with several of the Italian ministers, with the head of the Central Committee, and with the President of the Red Cross. Mr. Gay and Mr. Dodge were accompanied on their trip to Calabria by an officer of the General Staff, and were recommended directly by the Ministers of War and of the Navy to the commanding officers of the different stations. The aim of the Americans has never been to act independently of the Italians, but simply to put at the service of the Italians their eyes and brains as well as their money.
Americans who have contributed to the relief funds of the American Red Cross or directly to Italian funds can be satisfied that such part of their donations as went to the Italian central authorities will be spent with scrupulous probity in furtherance of a carefully considered and well matured plan of permanent rehabilitation, and that such part as was given by American agents has gone quickly and efficiently to the places where it was most needed, without any interference with the management by Italians of their own internal affairs. The problem is still in its early stages. The populations of the destroyed cities are not yet housed; the refugees are still living idly in the great towns. But that is an Italian, not an American question. We can be satisfied, it appears to me, with the system by which our money has been distributed hitherto, and be content to apply it to the future contingencies. That system has been for the American Red Cross to find out, through the American Ambassador at Rome, the exact needs of the Italians, as expressed by the government, and then to assign its needs for the enumerated purposes, giving a part to the central Italian authorities and a part to the Ambassador. What the Ambassador has received he has divided between central institutions and the relief of local needs. He has kept in touch directly with all the afflicted regions, through the consular corps, through special agents and through the reports of workers, and he has at the same time been in daily communication with the heads of all the official distributing committees. In this way he has been able to gauge accurately the needs of the situation. Certain American gifts, like the shipment of the three thousand houses, and the foundation of an agricultural school for one hundred children as a part of the Queen Elena Patronato, have produced a profound impression throughout the length and breadth of Italy because they have corresponded exactly to the necessities of the moment.
Americans, then, need have no misgivings about the administration of their donations. Italy cannot repair in a day the effects of so vast, so overwhelming a calamity as the Messina earthquake; the wound is too deep to heal quickly. Those only who have seen the misery which bows down the inhabitants of Sicily and Calabria can realize the tragic helplessness of all human succor. We must have patience till a way is found.Our nation can rest satisfied meanwhile that their generous offerings have directly and sensibly alleviated sufferings and kept hope alive, and they can rejoice in the opportunity which has been given to them to repay in part America’s and the world’s immeasurable debt to the land and people of Italy.
Milan, Italy, February 20, 1909.