Instructions: 

1. Watch and listen to the 60-Second Civics video below. If you'd like, you can also read along using the script that appears below the quiz. Or you can turn on the video's subtitles and read while watching the video.
2. Take the Daily Civics Quiz. If you get the question wrong, watch the video again or read the script and try again.

Episode Description:
While most Americans during the colonial period were farmers, others followed various trades, working as brickmakers, carpenters, printers, sailors, shoemakers, and even wigmakers, among other professions. Listen to this podcast to learn more about these colonial careers!

Trades and Land Speculation in the American Colonies: Back-to-School Basics, Part 8

This is 60-Second Civics from the Center for Civic Education. I'm Mark Gage.

 

Most Americans during the colonial period were farmers.

 

Those who were not followed various trades, working as brickmakers, carpenters, printers, sailors, shoemakers, and even wigmakers, among other professions.

 

Wigs were fashionable in eighteenth-century Europe and in the American colonies.

 

They were a sign of wealth and elevated social status, but few could afford them.

 

One favorite American pastime was speculating on land, which was mostly undertaken by the wealthy, such as George Washington. 

 

Washington surveyed land extensively and eventually owned more than sixty-five thousand acres.

 

Although most colonial settlements were located on the coast, Americans pushed westward in search of land, which caused conflict with Native Americans and with the French.

 

That’s all for today’s podcast.

 

60-Second Civics, where civic education only takes a minute.