Show I I I ASTRAKHAN IS II CONfLICT WORN Former Prosperity of City Is I Gone I IA A ASTRAKHAN Russia Feb 3 Once orice Once prosperous f i o the e bS but situation u now tl n r ravaged of this city by tyr revolution revolution rev rev- re reminds re- re minds the visitor of ot the condition of ot otI New Orleans after the Civil war It Is la trying to regain its former prosperity prosperity pros pros- but the process is slow Eves Evert its position Astrakhan resembles New Orleans in some ways The city is pitched on an Island on a poInt where the Volga river divides into many smaller maller streams forming a delta that extends sixty miles mlles to the Caspian sea The commerce of ot Astrakhan was once comparable with that of ft St. St Louis Memphis or of ot New Orleans It was Vas rich In furs In fish In caviar and busy handling freight which traversed the Volga There was once food lood for tor every mouth and clothes for tor every back work J aplenty for tor every man Today are seen the wrecks wrought by combat between tho the imperial ami ad revolutionary forces but no 10 sympathy Is expressed with communism We OWe have havo had enough said one of ot the workmen who together with thousands of ot his fellows and for eighteen davs days Just after atter the Petrograd and Moscow risings In 1917 took to arms and be- be the Cossack troon and the wealthy people of ot the city gathered In the Kremlin walls in soldier barracks bar bar- racks and other points at at the heart of ot the business district The immediate result of these eighteen eighteen eight eight- et een n days of carnage was the destruction destruction destruction tion of ot the Duma buildings building the governors governor's governors governor's governors governor's gov gov- house the great bazar and several blocks of or stores filled with with- with dry dry goods and Persian and Turkestan car care car pets petR silks and other fineries The ultimate result is s Indic indicated ted l-ted by the bare fire lIre burned today I standing gaunt and cheerless with no work on the river and no jio food in the homes for these workmen The people people peo peo- Je have little money to buy an The spirited horses which once filled the horse market at the riverside have gone Kone to the wars not forr to r return or have l-een l requisitioned for forthe the present Budenny cavalry a a. t few w troops of which I are quartered here In the provincial hospital where patients lay there was was practically no i broth for tor famine refugees ees nor quinnE for fever sufferers Dr I the woman In charge said American relief was promised but so o far it had not come The only public gathe gathering places opened seemed to b be as the moving pICture picture pic pIC- ture tune theatre which w was crowded with with young o people and soldiers of ot the Bud- Bud cavalry watching an utterly Italian tragedy |