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between Sparrows Point and Baltimore proper. Far to the northeast at Middle
River, Glenn Martin Aircraft located its central production facilities on a huge two-
square-mile tract; the showpiece of Baltimore's new "glamour" aircraft industry was
thus far beyond the city's borders. And Bethlehem invested another $100,000,000
at Sparrows Point, making it the largest tidewater steel mill in the world and further
shifting the industrial balance toward the east. In sum, the Baltimore industrial
region again moved steadily to the south and especially to the east of the city during
the 1920s. Parenthetically, it is interesting to note the leading role that branch
plants of national corporations played in this movement: of those companies listed
above, only Crown Cork and Seal Co. and Davison Chemical were "home" firms. "
One ramification of the expansion of the industrial region in the 1920s was
that many key industries were outside of the jurisdiction of the city's municipal
government, but still within the scope of the boards and bureaus of the Association
of Commerce, thereby greatly enhancing the power of this association relative to
the formal city government. Conversely, the largely city-based association
developed enormous leverage over the county and municipal governments of
Baltimore County and Anne Amndel County, where much new industry was
located.

Another ramification of the expansion was that more and more workers
commuted some distances from their residences, and industrially-linked
neighborhoods were increasingly undermined. The neighborhood-based workplace
was still a reality for workers in many smaller and middle sized industries, and in
some larger ones (garments being the most important); Rod Ryon has estimated
that from 55%-80% of Baltimore's industrial workers lived within two miles of their
work as late as 1925. However, traveling some distance to work, in a direction
different from that of the neighbors, became a fact of life for increasing numbers of
the industrial workers in the largest enterprises in the 1920s. To an extent, the