Welsh Journals

adaptations of many out-dated buildings in this technically complex and characteristic industry of old South Wales, helped to accelerate the modernisa- tion of the industry as a whole. By the post-war years these improvisations had cleared the way towards better productivity. The first three tinplate factories to be acquired for vital war storage purposes were the Aman, the Raven and the Glynbeudy Works in the Aman Valley; these were the easiest to take, being idle, under a 'care and maintenance' basis. (Historic Changes in the South Wales Tinworks' In the year 1940 of Britain's danger, two rapid moves were taken in London which led on to the overhaul of the ancient South Wales Steel Sheet and Tinplate Industry. One was the action taken by Mr Emrys Pride as Assistant to Sir Cecil Weir at the Board of Trade in consultation with the Chairman of the Tin- plate Conference of Employers, towards the closures and war- time uses of redundant factories. In the second, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Bank of England asked Mr (now Sir) Ernest Lever an accountant from the Prudential Assurance Company to look into the finances of Richard Thomas and Co. Sir Ernest Lever became chairman of the £ 200 million Steel Com- pany of Wales. EMRYS PRIDE THE WAR-TIME 'CONCENTRATION' of the South Wales tinplate industry was helped by the goodwill of many owners, the managers and union representatives in the steel and tinplate works in consultation with the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Supply. The Tinplate Conference, representing the whole industry, was equally co-operative. Most of the eighty factory premises along the South Wales seaboard and the nearby valleys of Monmouthshire, Glamorgan and Carmarthen- shire were rapidly inspected for available storage-space jointly by factory managers and the Board of Trade controllers. Here and there a well-lighted department could be improvised for war production. There were five major combinations each owning a grouping of factories; and nineteen 'independent' firms which owned either one tinworks or at most two or three such factories. Some of the factories had become idle for several years pre-war under a gradual modernisa- tion policy for the industry, of pooling and quotas and price standards. There can be no doubt that the extensive wartime closures and