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realization of these plans, but they formed the framework for Baltimore's post-
bellum commercial growth.
Baltimore's national and international trade recovered and grew
substantially in the decades after the war through the early twentieth century.
International trade, in particular, spurted after 1914 with the opening of the
Panama Canal and the beginning of World War I in Europe. National trade
reached further and further to the south and west; again the west was most
important and the main railroad trunk lines ran far in this direction. During the
post-World War I period, Baltimore came into its own as an international
commercial center. In 1920 Baltimore was seventh in the U.S. in volume of foreign
trade; by 1926 it was third behind only New York and New Orleans. In 1937 the
port of Baltimore would register the second largest total volume of water-borne
and foreign commerce in the U.S. As a by-product of Baltimore's expanding
international trade and the growth in the range of its domestic trade, its economic
dependence on adjacent regions either to the south or the west on the eve of the
Depression eroded.
It is important to note that Baltimore's commercial and industrial sectors
were in no sense parallel, autonomous processes, but were intimately interrelated,
giving Baltimore its distinctive urban economy at the end of the 1920s. For nearly
two centuries, a wide variety of key manufacturing activities — from milling flour, to
canning oysters, to making clothing and cigars, to copper and sugar refining, to tin
can and steel production — developed successfully in Baltimore because the port,
the railroads, and the roads provided a ready means for the wide distribution of
their products. Conversely, the availability of raw materials from all over the U.S.
and from countries all over the world stimulated the development of Baltimore's
industry, particularly during the crucial periods of industrialization in the late
nineteenth century and the post-World War I years. The giant steel plant at
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