[3] In the 16th century, plagues decimated the population to the point that the consulate of Lyon initiated a special quest to aid the people in Tarare.

[4] In the 1850s, silk mills at Tarare were taking on unmarried young women aged between thirteen and fifteen as apprentices.

Silks and merinoes are also made here.”[6]A now archaic description of the early 20th-century economy is provided by the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: Tarare is the centre of a region engaged in the production of muslins, tarletans, embroidery and silk-plush, and in printing, bleaching and other subsidiary processes.

Till 1756, when the manufacture of muslins was introduced from Switzerland, the town lay unknown among the Beaujolais mountains.

The manufacture of Swiss cotton yarns and crochet embroideries was introduced at the end of the 18th century; at the beginning of the 19th figured stuffs, openworks and zephyrs were first produced.