Talk:Great Salem fire of 1914

Figures adjusted for inflation
I have used the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflaction Calculator to get some rough figures for illustration purposes. I am aware that inflation statistics are black voodoo magic. Rl 12:58, 29 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Alas, in practice the adjustment for a particular later year meant losing the actual figures. If one must choose between adjusted and actual figures, better to stick to the actual ones.  This problem appeared in the article for the 1835 fire of New York, in which a late 19th century article was quoted as correcting for "today's money" which of course has little to do with today's money.  Adjusted figures are optional; real figures are what is mandatory.  Oh, and are there any Wentworth dates?  Jim.henderson 19:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Wentworth
What info is needed on Alderman Wentworth or the fire? The city fathers never saw the likelyhood of a major conflagration starting in the factory districts. The city's large wooden buildings burnt with great frequency. I may have the needed information in my files of Salem Evening News articles on the Salem FD. Nelson Dionne, Salem MA


 * There is no discussion of timing. Did the arguments, out of town firehouse visits etc take place days before the fire?  Months?  Decades?

"Folklore" section
User:IWPCHI suggested in an edit tag that the entire "Folklore" section be deleted: "I would have preferred to have removed the entire "folklore" section due to its naked absurdity; but a previous editor has provided a "source" for the nonsense, so I merely re-characterized it properly. If you can find even one citizen of Salem who would publicly admit to believing any of this crap I'd be astounded. Salem is full of con artists retailing "old" witch tales they embellish or make up from whole cloth for sale to gullible tourists." I think this is completely right: this is not a commonly held belief and it was not discussed (at least in print) at the time of the fire. It would be a big change to this article to delete it outright, so I want to raise it here to get a consensus on it, but I urge us to delete it. Remes (talk) 16:38, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks Remes! Tried to figure out how to contact you to thank you for your kind words but I don't have the time to spend a day figuring out Wikipedia's labyrinthine communications protocols. I don't understand why there would be a "folklore" section in *any* historical article. Perhaps those kinds of items should be put on a "Salem Folklore" page of their own? But I suppose that so long as the body of the article makes it abundantly clear that the "folk tales" belong in the realm of "cloud-cuckoo-land" they could stay. If your hoped-for initiation of discussion of the issue doesn't bear fruit in the next few weeks, perhaps we could delete the "folklore" section to provoke the defenders of it into coming out of the Wikipedian woodwork to justify its inclusion? IWPCHI (talk) 11:13, 30 December 2020 (UTC)IWPCHI


 * Okay. It's been two weeks since I posted this, and I see no objections. I'm going to delete the entire "Folklore" section for the reasons I stated above. Remes (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2021 (UTC)