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deemed anti-business such as state laws for a minimum wage, workmen's
compensation, the 8-hour day for women, a child labor amendment, a state
nonpartisan insurance fund, and a soldier's bonus (all but the last were defeated
during the 1920s). In 1924, these quasi-public bodies, which included the Industrial
Corporation, the Industrial Bureau, the Export-Import Bureau, the Traffic and
Transportation Bureau, and the Maryland Development Bureau, were unified
under the newly formed Baltimore Association of Commerce which had enormous
influence in running the city - and, indeed, in economic activity throughout the
greater Baltimore area. It is reflective of the character of the Baltimore capitalist
class, that, as noted above, one of the most important of these bodies, the Industrial

Bureau, was largely charged with bringing the branch plants of out-of-state

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corporations into Baltimore.

Ward-based machine-style political practices were tamed and channeled by
these renovations, but not destroyed, for they continued to prove to be useful in
building popular electoral bases on the neighborhood level. Baltimore's
Democratic Party in particular had effective neighborhood clubs in a variety of
class and ethnic neighborhoods. The Democratic Party machine had, though, been
divided and weakened by factionalism throughout most of the twentieth century, a
factionalism that worsened in the 1920s. Unlike many Southern and Northern
cities, the city Democratic Party did not dominate Baltimore politics; as Robert
Goldberg has argued, real party competition survived in Baltimore. In fact,
Baltimore had a Republican mayor, William Broening, from 1919 to 1923, and
from 1927 to 1931. When Howard Jackson, who had been the Democratic mayor
from 1923 to 1927, again won the mayoralty in 1931 (which he would hold until
1943, when he would again be replaced by a Republican), he did so as the head of a
chastened city Democratic Party, dependent as much on the city business elites as
on ward organizations. Jackson then set about building his own power base,
separate from the two main existing Democratic Party factions, further weakening