Baltimore's industries are widely diversified with no single line employing over io% of the city's industrial workers. There are 26 classifications, each of which before the depression employed over L000 men.
In the year 1632 King Charles I. granted a charter to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore (c. 158o-1632), conveying to him almost unlimited territorial and governmental rights in a tract of land between the Potomac river and the 4oth parallel, and styling him absolute lord and proprietor thereof. Subsequent clauses of the charter so circumscribed the proprietor's power that, in effect, it differed little from other colonial patents granted by Charles I. George Calvert died before the charter had passed the Great Seal and, in the same year, the charter was issued to his oldest son, Cecil. In Nov. 1633, two vessels, the "Ark" and the "Dove," carrying at least 200 colonists under Leonard Calvert, a brother of the proprietor, as governor, sailed from Gravesend. They arrived in Maryland late in March of the following year, and the colonists established a settlement on a promontory be tween the Potomac river and the Chesapeake bay. For several years their relations with the Indians were friendly, but eventually the colony suffered severely from Indian wars. More serious was the hostility of William Claiborne (c. 1589-1676), secretary of the Colony of Virginia, who, under a trader's licence, had purchased Kent island in the Chesapeake bay from the Indians and had in 1631 established a settlement there. As a result of Claiborne's refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of Lord Balti more over Kent island, in which he was supported by the council of Virginia, an enmity developed between him and Leonard Calvert which resulted in a long feud between the Mary land settlers and Claiborne's men, marked by continual attacks and reprisals. The Colony enjoyed peace from 166o until 1688.
The province of Maryland presented an early and successful example of tolerance toward the religious beliefs of its inhabitants. Lord Baltimore was a Roman Catholic, and probably it was his intention that Maryland should be an asylum for persecuted members of that body. He de- -
sired Protestant colonists also, however, and to this end prom ised and, so far as he could, established and enforced re ligious toleration in its full sense. With the growth of a Puritan party in the province, fearing that he would soon lose control of affairs, he pro posed to the assembly the famous act concerning religion which was passed in 1649. It extended tolerance and protection only to bodies professing trinitarian Christianity, and was thus somewhat less liberal than the policy which the proprietor had earlier pursued.
Although the charter reserved to the proprietor the right of calling an assembly of the freemen or their delegates when and as he should choose, the colonists obtained from him in 1638 the surrender of his claim to the sole right of initiating legislation. This is one of the most striking examples of the effort to secure local self-government shown in any of the 13 Colonies. By 165o the assembly had been divided into two houses. One of these, the consent of which was necessary before a bill might become law, was composed entirely of the representatives of the freemen, and annual sessions as well as triennial elections were becoming usual. In 1670 the governor, Charles Calvert, sought to check growing opposition to his policy by disfranchising all freemen who did not have a freehold of 5o ac. or a visible estate of £40 sterling. This step caused impassioned complaints against him in which it was alleged that he was interfering in elections and keeping the government in the hands of Roman Catholics, mostly members of his own family. About this time also the north ern and eastern boundaries of the province began to suffer from the encroachments of William Penn. The territory now form ing the State of Delaware was within the limits defined by the Maryland charter, but in 1682 it was transferred to Penn by the Duke of York, and in 1685 Lord Baltimore's claim to it was denied by an order in council on the ground that it had been in habited by Christians before the Maryland grant was made.