“I am now sending Mr. Winthrop Chanler, who is accompanied by four or five young Italian noblemen, to Calabria to carry out the most elaborate piece of work yet projected. We are to rebuild one whole town—Gallina. Calabria—about three hundred wooden houses, and to deliver and build three hundred other houses of lighter construction in the highest towns of the Calabrian Mountains. We work through the military authorities and at their request, but we conduct the work ourselves. In the meantime our young Italians will use our money to rehabilitate the inhabitants in their trades and professions, under Mr. Chanter’s direction. We are buying a shipload of lumber very cheaply in Naples and sending it ourselves to the spot. This is the use I am making of the last $20,000 the Red Cross has entrusted to me. From Gay’s report three hundred houses are needed, at about $100 a house, which will make $30,000. I have the recent grant of $20,000 and the unexpended balance from the Relief Ship appropriation is $17,000, making a total of $37,000. This leaves $7,000 for expenses of hospitals, etc. These operations will all be done in the name of the American Red Cross. Mr. Chanler will lay out the town, establish police and sanitary regulations and hurry the building in accordance with a plan I have outlined. I am sending down a young Italian doctor to establish a little hospital and keep the place sanitary. We work through the military authorities, who supply the carpenters and laborers except when we employ people for the sake of giving them work. The rehabilitation is to go on while the houses go up and the young Italians, with Mr. Chanler, are especially to do this work. They are to search out the most deserving merchants and give them a start. I sincerely hope this project of mine will appeal to the Red Cross as it does to the Italian people. If a small part of my expectations are realized the money will be well spent. I may say here that the people in the earthquake zone have now plenty to eat and are clothed so that the greatest remaining need is shelter. They are dying from cold and its consequences—pneumonia, bronchitis, consumption, etc. The wood we are sending from America is a drop in a bucket. Mr. Gay reports that the military estimates of 600,000 homeless people are not exaggerated. It would take $12,000,000 to provide them with cheapest temporary houses, and the Italians have not this amount to dispose of. In the meantime people are living in half-ruined homes in imminent peril of being killed by any little earthquake, and the earth continues to quake frequently. Our new work begins in two days and will take a month or two.” This letter was written February 21st. In referring to the Orphanage Colony, Mr. Griscom says: “Yesterday the Queen sent for me a second time to reiterate her thanks.” She expressed her deep interest in the American Red Cross and desired to learn more about the Society.