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sections of the labor market. To the South the proportions of Blacks and whites
were reversed, and there was not sufficient white labor to fill the semi-skilled and
skilled positions so, to a greater degree than occurred in Baltimore, Blacks often
did. Whatever the case - and more comparative research is necessary to solve the
problem — the form that the racial-ethnic division of labor took in Baltimore had a
striking effect on the region's working class.

A final point: It might be objected that the above argument that all whites,
male and female, U.S. or foreign-born, were pan of a single racialized division of
labor ignores differences between immigrant European nationalities. The
objection would have some merit. While statistics on occupational distribution of
specific white ethnicities are hard to come bjr', it is clear that Polish men, for
example, and to a slightly lesser extent Italian and Lithuanian men, were
concentrated at the lower rungs of the employment ladder and disproportionally
shared the laboring-rank jobs with Black men. However, narrative evidence also
indicates that job segregation for these ethnicities was not as severe as that of
Blacks and that it eroded quickly, often by the second generation. More research
needs to be done to understand the differentials between European ethnicities
within the white division of labor. The fact of the matter is, though, that these
differentials were within the same division of labor; there is no evidence of
differentials between white ethnicities in Baltimore in 1930 on the order of those
between whites and Blacks.

Workplace Struggle, Trade Unions, and Working-Class Traditions

The contradictions of the capitalistic social division of labor are most
directly expressed in struggles based in the workplace, and the main institutional
forms of these struggles are trade unions. The working class of Baltimore at the
onset of the Great Depression had a trade-union movement that reflected both the