During the years before the witch trials fiasco, Salem faced many hardships such as Revolution in England, having their Charter revoked, harsh winters for a decade, small pox, and Indian attacks and other minor tragedies. Stating this shows that Salem was facing hard times and was put under a lot of stress, with no one to blame. Blaming all of these hardships on witchcraft seemed to be the logical easy way out for these people, it stopped their questions and made everyone feel better. Innocent women and men being used as scapegoats were not the primary reason for witch accusations though. The so-called victims accused the easiest targets such as people who had been convicted of other crimes in the past. This seemed logical people to be involved with witchcraft because they already had a record of being bad. They also accused many women, especially women without brothers or husbands because this basically ensure their loss of the trial. Without men to support them or to claim their land there was nothing they could do to prove their innocence. The biggest reason for the trials was greed. When a witch was convicted their land was put up for auction. That's why women were mostly accused, so their land would be taken. The rich were also targets of the accusations, because they had a lot of land, and Salem was a town/village of very greedy people. Even Parris admitted that the people had "lust of covetousness" and basically that although they were a religious town, instead of worrying about religion they were worrying about secular possessions. Parris said that "Christ knows who they are that have not chosen him, but prefer farms and merchandise above him and above his ordinances". When he said this he meant that the lord knew who was making the accusations out of greed, this is very ironic because his daughters were of the first afflicted women. The other irony of this is that mostly the anti-parris people were convicted of witchcraft, whereas as many less parris supporters were convicted of witchcraft, again proving my point that the people with land were accused .
