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because of greater English language skills and education. Conversely, foreign-born
women were only moderately underrepresented among domestic workers, although
their absolute numbers were small, while native-born women were all but absent.
These differences among white women workers do not however suggest different
systems of distribution for U.S.- and foreign-born whites, but rather they suggest
that sections of the two groups were at different stages of the same system.
Returning our focus to both male and female workers and looking at the
statistics for ethnic occupational distribution from another angle, the distinctive
internal economic character of the Black section of the working class can be quickly
sketched. As noted above, 91.3% of all employed Black women workers were
domestics. Black males identified as laborers in all sectors represented 51.8% of all
employed Black male workers. If those Black men employed as domestics and
servants are added to the laborers, their combined portion of all Black male
workers jumps to 69%. Together all Black workers, male and female, employed in
the economically marginal occupations of domestics or laborers represented over
three quarters (77.7%) of the employed Black working class. The economic
implications of this statistic for the Black community as a whole become clearer
when we recall that 883% of all employed African Americans in Baltimore were
working class.
As one would expect, this economic marginalization of Black workers in
Baltimore at the beginning of the 1930s was reflected in a sharp wage differential
relative to whites and in a greater vulnerability to unemployment. The Census
reported that in April 1930, less than six months after the stock market crash,
unemployment for Blacks had risen to 7.3% contrasted to 53% for whites, and to
8.7% for Black men compared to 5.9% for their white counterparts. As implied
in these figures the limited gains of Black workers in manufacturing during the
early 20th century were fragile. Ira Reid confirmed this fragility in 1934 when he
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