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who are actually a pan of the industrial working class are added, this sector exceeds
two-thirds of the class as a whole. As we have seen, the industrial sector of the
Baltimore economy as a whole, and the manufacturing sector in particular was
dynamic and grew rapidly in the post 1914 boom. Although things would change in
subsequent decades, the industrial working class of Baltimore on the eve of the
depression was far and away the most dynamic and important sector of the class.
Not surprisingly, Baltimore's industrial working class accounted for almost its entire

o

labor movement on the eve of the Depression.

However, the industrial sector of the working class was anything but
homogeneous. A surprising 44.7% of the workers in manufacturing industries were
classified as skilled and craft workers. This category included a range of workers
from those so proletarianized that they retained little control over their labor
processes to those who worked in traditional craft modes; from those who were
employed in small enterprises to those in gigantic factories.   But whatever the
variety found among workers in the skilled and craft category, the size of this
category as a whole indicates that a significant portion of the industrial working
class in Baltimore had some special interests in defending or retaining differentials
of rank, workplace power, and income over other workers. Among the craft
workers, the building trades workers, who made up over 35% of the skilled
manufacturing group deserve special mention in this regard, because they formed a
definite "aristocracy of labor** in Baltimore in this period, characterized by
particular prestige, position, and leverage, which often resulted in a tenacious
conservatism. Special interests and tendencies toward conservatism aside, the
skilled workers of Baltimore, and its construction workers in particular, were the
backbone of the region's trade unions in 1930.

The remainder of the workers in manufacturing were divided into the
categories of operatives and laborers. The operatives, accounting for 32.4% of the
manufacturing work force, were the group most directly appended to production