economicdiv

Divisions are beginning to form in Salem Village. The residents on the eastern side of Salem Village are becoming wealthier than those of the western side, for a number of reasons; the most obvious being simply because the easterners are closer to the prosperous Salem Town. A classic example of Von Thunen’s Isolated State, the farms that are closer to the market are wealthier than ones that are farther away. The topography of the land in the east is flatter and broader than the hilly and marshy land in the west, allowing for more output of farm product per acre in the east than the west.[1] Also, the border between eastern Salem Village and Salem Town is the Ipswich Road, which serves as an important route between Salem and Boston. The road itself has three points on Salem Harbor, which bring in many opportunities for trade and many occupations, such as a physician, carpenter, innkeeper, sawmill operator, shoemaker, miller, sawyer, potter, and “dish turner”.[2] These businesses provide the people of eastern Salem Village with easy access to modern goods and tools, while the farmers of western Salem Village are still using primitive tools.[3] The road also has four taverns, which are not seen as evil in the eyes of Puritans (the Puritans do not have strict laws against drinking), but these taverns are places where travelers, businessmen, and locals gather and escape from church, family, and town, an act seen as dangerous to the traditional thinkers in the west.[4]

As stated earlier, the town is further being divided between the Pro-Parris and Anti-Parris groups, regarding the newly hired priest Samuel Parris. The Pro-Parris members are mostly middle-wealth, church-going men “who have a sufficiently large stake in the status quo to feel menaced by whatever might threaten it, yet not enough to be able to take real advantage of the commercial opportunities that are opening up”[5] and poor non-church-going villagers who give the Pro-Parris group the majority in Salem Village. Most of the Pro-Parris group consists of the more traditional farmers in the west. The Anti-Parris group contains the relatively wealthier group of more modern Villagers who live in the east.

[1] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 94.

[2] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 96.

[3] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 94.

[4] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 101.

[5] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 99.