rat prices

[George Thompson]

OED:
Rat, noun #1, sense II 4 f.
orig. and chiefly U.S. Printing. A person who refuses to strike, or takes the place of a striking worker (cf. scab n. 4b). Also: a non-union worker; a person who works for lower wages than the usual or trade union rate.
Recorded earliest in compounds.

1824    Microscope (Albany, N.Y.) 6 Mar. 191/2   Loren‥Webster, chief ink-dauber in a rat-printing office at the west. Ralph Walby, nothing at all but a rat-printer.
1830    N.Y. Daily Sentinel 13 Mar. 2/3   [While] the master printers [fill] their offices with boys and two-thirds men, alias ‘rats’, it will be difficult to find a remedy.
1841    W. Savage Dict. Art of Printing 671   Rat, a compositor or pressman, who executes work at less than the regular prices‥. He is‥despised by the rest of the workmen.
&c.

Here is an adjectival use:
>From Ned Buntline, The G'hals of New York, 1850, p. 34:
[the boss of a printing shop] pays his employees what are termed in the trade rat prices, that is, less than the regular rates. . . .

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

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