This article analyses the job opportunities and the levels of salaries offered to white and black workers in a large industrial enterprise in Rio de Janeiro: the Brahma Brewing Co. It is a case study that attempts to answer to a number of questions on how black and immigrant working forces were inserted in the industrial working market of the Brazilian former federal capital. Taking these as a guide the article is structured in the following way: first of all, there is a discussion of a number of recurrent questions of historiography about the origins of industrial labor market and foreign immigration in First Republic; second, there is a brief summary of the origins and the first three decades of existence of Brahma Brewery; third, the methodological assumptions of data treatment are exposed, so that, in the fourth place, the profile of the company's labors is analyzed by using the indicators of nationality, skin color, educational level, job and wage levels. Finally, indicators were analyzed in order to identify possible discriminations among workers due to race or nationality. An unexpected finding was the presence of discrimination against Brazilians, but not against African-Brazilians as such.
