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| Sparrows Point |
| Maryland Historical Society |
World War II initiated the most prosperous quarter-century Marylanders had ever known. State incomes jumped from $634 a year in 1939 to $1,272 in 1945, a rate 7 percent higher than the national average. With inflation adjustment the real income for every person in Maryland increased by almost 50 percent. In Baltimore, where 859,100, or 47 percent, of the state's population of 1,821,244 lived, the number of open jobs outnumbered those wanted by thirty to one. Marylanders numbed by Depression-era apathy were delighted with the rise in spending money and expanding job choices. "Pay Checks Again-It's Grand!" ran one 1942 Baltimore Evening Sun headline, summarizing the feelings of many.
Industry
War-driven economic change came before the official start of hostilities in December, 1941. Shipbuilding, aircraft, munitions, and steel industries led the way. Although much industry centered in populous and well-situated Baltimore, growth was in no way limited to that city. Wartime boomtowns sprouted outside the city as well, and migrants from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere flocked to these centers for work. Elkton, Aberdeen, Edgewood, Middle River, and Lexington Park thrived on war-induced economic expansion. Elkton, for example, located in Cecil County, possessed a population of 3,518 in 1940. The town's Triumph Industries, a maker of fireworks employing 211 before the war, expanded through war contracts to employ over 11,000 people manufacturing ordnance. Middle River, located in Baltimore County, grew from a small locale to an important 125,000-strong center of defense production with the expansion of the Glenn L. Martin aircraft plant during the war. The Martin plant attracted its wartime work force of 53,000 with relatively high wages of $40 to $65 per week. Locals, in fact, were convinced that the "Rosie the Riveter" of the now famous wartime poster was a Martin plant employee. The Martin pattern-industrial plant expansion through war contracts-was repeated in other parts of Maryland as well. In Washington County, for example, Fairchild Aircraft grew from 200 to 8,000 employees.
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| WWII poster supporting workers in the U.S. |
| Maryland Historical Society |
Agriculture
Not to be outdone by the factory-based industries of war, Maryland farmers, who saw a general increase in standard of living during these years, performed their own miracles of production. Though the farm population thinned out after 1939 by 14.8 percent due to the draft and the exodus of would-be workers into higher-paying defense jobs, the value of Maryland farm production increased 137.8 percent between 1940 and 1945. Despite 30 percent less labor than in prewar years, Maryland farmers turned out 40 percent more food. They tripled production of commercial broilers to address meat shortages. To address shortages of oils, they more than doubled production of soybeans, and milk and egg output increased by one-fifth. To help supply civilians, armed forces, and overseas populations stricken by war shortages of canned goods, Maryland farmers planted 65 percent additional acreage in snap beans, 55 percent in sweet corn, and 28 percent in tomatoes. Maryland, in fact, was the leading canner of tomatoes during the war and ranked fourth in volume of all canned goods produced. The number of harvested acres increased 8.5 percent. Farmers scurried to gather "field armies" for their bumper crops as the need arose. Depending on whether you were harvesting tomatoes in Crisfield, felling trees for paper in Aberdeen, or picking fruit in Western Maryland, you might be surrounded by high school girls drafted from Baltimore, Jamaican immigrants, or German POWs-all were recruited for work in the farms, fields, and forests of wartime Maryland.
Work
Distribution of the new incomes, moreover, spread across all economic and social classes. Working-class salaries and wages saw a net increase of 140 percent, while upper-class income from profits, interest, and rents dropped by 20 percent. With the exodus of men into the military, moreover, job opportunities for women and African Americans jumped.
Blacks left jobs as domestics and farm tenants for better paying work in factories, and their percentage in the Maryland work force increased from 7 to 17 percent although the practice of keeping them out of the most desirable jobs was widespread. African Americans that sought to settle in Baltimore, where most of the jobs were, had particularly difficult time finding housing. Confined by segregation to a total of three square miles of the city despite their numbers of nearly 200,000, some found shelter in old horse stables and others crowded into tiny apartments.
Maryland women were called up for war work, and responded in substantial numbers. They went from 29 percent of the state workforce in 1940 to 39 percent in 1945. Many had to be persuaded by government campaigns to operate drill presses and cranes, but the effect was liberating, if short-lived. Most women saw their work in wartime factories as temporary, and returned to domestic work at home when the conflict ended. PHOTO WITH THIS PARAGRAPH
In addition to the billions of dollars pumped into the economy through defense contracts, the federal government also became the state's largest direct distributor of jobs, employing about 45,000 Marylanders in 1942. War agencies and military establishments accounted for the increases in federal employment from 1940 to 1945. Military camps swelled local towns and economies. St. Mary's County, with a 1940 population of 24,620, saw an influx of 14,000 civilian and military workers with the building of Patuxent Naval Air Station. Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and Andrews Field in Prince George's County saw similar population booms. The bases trained over one million people for various war functions, and created informal economies of prostitution, gambling, and robbery. These years also saw the growth of intelligence and research activities in Maryland suburbs. The forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of Strategic Services, held five leading training centers in Maryland suburbs, for example.
Rationing and Volunteerism
With the goods of industry and agriculture supplying not only state needs, but those of portions of the military and overseas communities, Marylanders, like all other Americans, found themselves dealing with shortages and rationing goods essential to the making of war. Gasoline, sugar, beef, rubber, coffee, and other items were rationed, and the state's citizens struggled to make sense of ration books containing coupons necessary to buying items made scarce by their necessity in fighting the war. Price controls on hard-to-find goods were set to prevent overcharging, but with tenacity and enough cash, one could find the rationed goods one wanted on a thriving black market. In addition to doing without, Marylanders collected tons of scrap metal, paper, rubber, and assorted junk that would be reconditioned into tanks and ammunition, recycled into paper, and remade into tires for military vehicles. On one fall day in 1942, more than 1,000 soldiers from Fort Meade collected 14,000,000 pounds of scrap metal and rubber from Baltimore storefronts and stoops, and resident sidewalks alone.
Marylanders shared their money and time with a variety of local charities more than they had prior to the war. Drives were held for people of China, Poland, Britain, Russia, France, Holland, Norway, Greece and Italy. Thousands volunteered hours and dollars for the Red Cross and United Service Organizations (USOs). Marylanders spent 2.6 billion on war bonds during the war years, believing their purchase both a good investment as well as a patriotic act. The investments laid the groundwork for the state's strong postwar economy.
Bentley, Amy. "The Wages of War: The Shifting Landscape of Race and Gender in World War II Baltimore."Maryland Historical Magazine. 88 (1993): 420-43.
