A Short History of Llanelly 1897
an article transcribed from the Llanelly Trade Directory of September 1897
LLANELLY has no rival as the chief town in Carmarthenshire, and excluding some great centres in Glamorganshire it is the most considerable and important town from, commercial and other standpoints in Wales. Rapid as its progress has been from the beginning of the century, its growth during the present decade exceeds in celerity the previous swift and glorious career of what was described not so very long ago as "a small fishing village." In this memorable and joyful year of our good Queen's reign there are signs of growing strength and elastic expansion which would have been regarded as in the highest degree a fanciful and chimerical forecast five years ago. The McKinley Tariff, it was surmised, sounded the death knell of the Tinplate Trade in this country. As this is our staple industry, it was gloomily predicted that we had reached the summit of prosperity, and the light of Llanelly would now begin to wane. The Americans have succeeded to an alarming extent in the manufacture of tinplates, and it is stated that they make sufficient already to supply their own needs. Thanks to the enterprise and sagacity of the home manufacturers, things are nevertheless not in a hopeless condition in Llanelly. New markets have been found to take the place in a measure of the lost ones, and the opening out of other countries for the reception of plates is capable of development beyond our wildest dreams, so that the trade in our own district is not in much danger of languishing. To restrict the production and to adapt themselves to the circumstances of the time, tinplate manufacturers have converted a part of their works for the purposes of galvanizing, and other fresh ideas have been conceived which, if acted upon, will minimise to vanishing point the evils of the American competition...
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