rat prices; rat office; rat it; rat off (again 1850)

[Joel S. Berson]

A few other instances, also 1850, from the
New-Hampshire Patriot [Concord]; Date:
06-20-1850; Volume: 4; Issue: 161; Page: [2], col. 5.  EAN.

The State Printing.
We refer very reluctantly to the subject of the
State Printing ... It is true that there are "rat
offices" ... that is, offices where runaway
apprentices and men compelled to work for what
they can get, are employed at half-price ...They
[their employers] "rat it" out of the men they
employ. ... We have no idea that they are going
to "rat off" the printing at the "rat" prices
paid at the "rat offices" in this and other towns.

"rat office" = "rat" n.1, C2, interdates 1833 -- 1993.
"rat it" = "rat" v.5, sense 2.  interdates [1837 "ratting"] -- 1851.
"rat off" = contract out at "rat prices", not in OED.

(Apparently no instances of "rat print[...]"
earlier than 1840 in EAN or 19th c. US Newspapers.)

Joel

At 4/11/2011 12:25 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>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¡LWebster, 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¡L.
>He is¡Ldespised 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.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org