Slang

to 'make a pile,' to 'take a back seat,' to 'beat the band,' to 'be the whole shooting-match,' and 'to talk shop,' are examples of phrases whose metaphorical origin is clear. Another class, not very numerous, consists of coined words and phrases. Some are descriptive 'sky-pilot' for compounds like clergyman, and 'pot-boiler,' which at the same time signifies and stigmatizes certain works of art and literature. Other words seem to be of purely arbitrary formation, like 'absquatulate,' 'razzle-dazzle,' etc. Phrases are formed on the analogy of slang expressions already in use (hence in the know' compared with 'in the swim'); and contractions originate new words, especially perhaps in older slang (hence phiz' and 'bus,' and mob'). Nicknames like 'Peeler' from the name of Sir Robert Peel, may be included in this class; and also words now generally accepted, like 'boycott' from Captain Boycott, and 'hooligan' from a London thief of that name. Thieves' slang or 'cant' is hardly slang in the proper sense; nor is the socalled 'back-slang,' of which there are several varieties such as yennep' for penny, and 'anmer'

for man.

The contribution made by foreign languages to the slang of any country, though it is not to be disregarded, does not form a large proportion of the whole. Thus boss' is from the Dutch (baas), tiffin' is Anglo-Indian, 'dago is Spanish (Diego), and 'spiel' and bum' are German. The Celtic languages and the imported foreign languages, such as Romany or Gypsy and Yiddish, have made contributions especially to the older slang vo cabulary. For example, 'sheeny' is said

to be Yiddish, and 'twig' to be of Celtic origin. But most of the Romany words which are given in the slang dictionaries are now either part of the standard language, or have become obsolete, or may simply vulgar. 'Cove,'

be classed 'jockey,' 'moke,' and

as

247

etc.

Slater Fund

Lande, Glossaire Erotique (Brussels, 1861); Farrar, Chapters on Language (London, 1865); Brander Matthews, Parts of Speech, pp. 187-213 (New York, 1901); Maitland, American Slang Dictionary (Chicago, 1901); C. Stoffel's Studies in English (1st series, 1894); Storm's Englische Philologie (2d ed. 1892-96, pp. 557581); and, for special classes of American slang, the bulletins issued from time to time by the American Dialect Society.

slang is euphemistic; it delights in the invention of synonyms for particular words, and devises substitutes for others which people for a variety of reasons dislike or hesitate to use. The gallows had a great variety of names in the old thieves' slang, as 'hempen-widow;' the act of dying is expressed by many slang words, as 'squeak,' 'slip his wind;' and, similarly, drinking and drink and the various stages of intoxication, as 'booze,' 'slewed,' 'dippy,' 'shot,' To be feeble-minded or silly or eccentric is expressed by phrases such as 'to have a screw loose,' 'a slate off,' 'bats in his belfry,' 'to be cracked,' or 'dotty,' or touched,' or 'off his base'; to be in difficulties is expressed by 'to be in a hole,' 'in a box,' 'on his beam ends,' or 'in the soup'; to outwit or practise an imposition on a person, by such equivalents as 'do,' 'give him a song and dance,' 'pull his leg,' 'take in,' 'josh.' It is remarkable how many slang expressions, of various degrees of humor, signify head, especially in lower-class slang (nut,' 'think-box,' 'brainpan,' 'upper story'). Money has many equivalents in all classes of society (dough,' 'the stuff,' 'tin,' shekels,' rhino'), and so has the 'swell,' 'dude," ‘giddyboy,' 'sport,' or 'masher' (compare also the older designations, beau,' 'blade,' 'blood," "buck,' 'exquisite, 'gallant,' 'spark'); The vocabulary of praise and blame is largely augmented by the use of slang equivalents. 'Ripping,' 'swagger,' 'stunning,' 'the cheese,' 'rot,' and 'poppycock,' are but a few of many well-known examples. A peculiarly English contribution to the vocabulary of praise is made by what may be called minimizing expressions, like 'not half bad' and a very decent fellow,' representing the rhetorical figure called meiosis.

mug' (face), 'pal,' to 'tool' (horses along) may be given as specimens. Even old English contributes a few resuscitated words, such as to 'be nuts on' and to 'lark,' and 'larky.'

After eliminating the preceding classes of slang words, there remain a very large number whose origin is uncertain or unknown. Monosyllabic and dissyllabic

words are

in

The origin of words like 'dinky,'

a great majority.

'brick,'

to

scads,' 'batty'

(un

sound or shaky), 'fly' (cunning), 'fishy,' 'bazoo,' and a scratch team, is dope,' to 'swipe,' more or less obscure or conjec

tural.

It is noteworthy that much

Slater, city, Saline co., Mo., 82 m. E. by N. of Kansas City, on the Chi. and Alt. R. R. It is a division point of this railroad and has a flour mill and a grain elevator. The city owns and operates its water-works and electric lighting plant. Settled and incorporated as a village in 1878, Slater received its present charter in 1884. Pop. (1910) 3,238.

See the Dictionary of Slang and Cant, by Barrère and Leland (2 vols. 1897); Slang and its Analogues, by Farmer and Henley (7 vols. 1890-1904); Argot and Slang (French), by Albert Barrère (revised ed. 1889); De

Slater, JOHN Fox (1815-84), American manufacturer and benefactor, nephew of Samuel Slater, was born at Slatersville, R. I., and received an academic education. His father, John Slater, brother of Samuel, had bought a woollen mill at Hopeville, Conn., and John Fox was placed in charge of this, and afterward of the Slater cotton mill at Jewett City, three miles away. His brother William came into the business, and after 1842 John Fox resided at Norwich, Conn., becoming sole owner of the mill property in 1872. He was a founder of the Norwich Free Academy, gave liberally to other local institutions, and in 1882 placed $1,000,000 in the hands of trustees (the Slater Fund), the interest to be used for the education of the freedmen in the South. For this he received the thanks of Congress. See the Memorial (Norwich, 1885).

manu

Slater, SAMUEL (1768-1835), American manufacturer, was born at Belper, Derbyshire, England, and after serving an apprenticeship as a cotton-spinner with Jedediah Strutt, partner of Richard Arkwright, emigrated to the U. S. in 1789, after hearing of the act of Congress of that year for the encouragement of factures. Through the encouragement of Moses Brown of R. I., he went to Pawtucket early in 1790 and there constructed from memory the first Arkwright cotton-spinning machinery erected in America. In 1806 he sent for his brother John, and they established the mills at the present town of Slatersville, R. I.; and during the next few years the manufacture of cotton was widely extended, with the Slater system taken as a model. See White's Memoir (Philadelphia, 1836).

Slater Fund, JOHN F. For the education of Freedmen. A trust

fund of $1,000,000 given in 1862 by John F. Slater of Connecticut to aid in the education of the colored people of the Southern states. The original benefaction has grown in the hands of the treasurer, Morris K. Jesup, to $1,500,000. Preference is given to industrial education and the training of teachers. Among the chief beneficiaries of the fund are Tuskeegee and Hampton Institutes.

Slates are fine-grained argillaceous rocks, similar in composition to certain kinds of clay, and possessing a very perfect secondary cleavage, by which they split readily into thin plates. They are clays which have been folded, compressed, and rendered partly crystalline. The cleavage quite distinct from the bedding, which is known as the 'stripe.' Many slates contain fossils. Good slates are very durable; they do not split up when exposed to heat, moisture, and frost; but as they thin, they are somewhat fragile. Large slabs, a half-inch thickness,

are

or

more in

may

be planed in a machine, and are used for tables, wall-facings, cisterns, and are sometimes polished, painted, and enamelled in imitation of marble. But on account of their lightness, thinness, durability, and toughness, slates are principally used as a roofing material. The best qualities of slate have a glossy surface, from the presence of fine crystals of mica. Slates are sold by the square, a square being the number of slate required to lay 100 square feet of roof, allowing 3inch lap. The usual dimensions range from 24 in. by 14 in. to 9 in. by 7 in. They are worked either by open quarrying or by mining; large blocks are obtained by blasting or by sawing the rock out of its natural bed, and are then dressed and sawn into lengths by machinery or by hand saws. Great skill is required in cleaving and dressing the slates; it is done with thin, broad wedges and wooden mallets. Slate - mining is principally carried on in Pennsylvania, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Virginia, New York, and in small amount in a few other states. The prevailing color is blue-gray to nearly black, but Vermont produces a green and a purple slate, while New York furnishes the only supply of red color. The total product for 1904 was valued at $5,617,195, of which Pennsylvania produced considerably over half. "Canada, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Saxony, Belgium, and Austria all have local mines of slate, but none excel the Welsh. See D. C. Davies's Slates and Slate-Quarrying (ed. 1887), and Mineral Resources of the U.S.

Slatina, tn., Oltu co., Roumania, on Aluta R., 30 m. E.N.E. of Craiova. Pop. (1900) 8,028.

Slatington, bor., Lehigh co., Pa., 12 m. N.w. of Allentown, on the Lehigh R., and on the Cent. of N. J., the Leh. and New Eng., the Leh. Val., and the Phila. and Read. R. Rs. The quarrying of an excellent grade of slate and the manufacture of roofing and school slates are important industries. There are, also, manufactures of knit goods, hosiery, silks, machinery, rolling mill products, boilers, etc. Blue Mountain and Lehigh Gap are picturesque places in the vicinity. The first settlement here was made in 1738 and the borough was incorporated in 1864. Pop. (1910) 4,454.

Slatin Pasha, STR RUDOLF KARL (1857), Egyptian officer, born in Vienna; went to the Sudan (1878), and was appointed by General Gordon governor of Darfur. After fighting twentyseven battles, he had to surrender to the Mahdi (1884), and was placed in chains in Khartum. In 1895 he succeeded in escaping. He then became one of the chief officers in the Egyptian Intelligence Department, and took part in the campaign ending with Omdurman. In 1900 he was appointed inspector-general of the Sudan. He has written Fire and Sword in the Sudan (1896).

Slaughter House Cases. The name applied to a group of cases of far-reaching importance decided by the U. S. Supreme Court at the December term of 1872. The state of Louisiana in 1869 had given to a corporation, for sanitary reasons, the exclusive right to maintain stockyards, slaughter houses, etc., in the city of New Orleans, for a term of twenty-five years. Though any one was allowed to kill at these establishments upon payment of fees, suits were brought upon the ground that privileges guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment were infringed. By a majority of five to four the Supreme Court decided that such an act was within the proper exercise of the police power of the state, and that the Federal government could not interfere. It declared that there is a citizenship of the United States and a citizenship of a state which are distinct,' and, further, that there is a difference between the privileges and immunities belonging to a citizen of the United States, as such, and those belonging to a citizen of the state as such, and that the latter must rest for their security and protection where they have heretofore rested.' As this decision and its implications evidently indicated a reaction against the doctrine of the supreme power of the Federal

government, it has been fiercely criticised by the extreme nationalists, who claim that the decision surrenders all gained by the Civil War and the reconstruction legislation. The decision is in Wallace's Reports, v. 16. See Burgess, Political Science and Constitutional Law (1890).

Slaughtering and Slaughter House. See ABATTOIR; PACKING INDUSTRY; MEAT.

Slave Coast, part of coast of Upper Guinea, W. Africa, from the Volta to the Benin, now included in the spheres of influence of Germany, France, and Great Britain. See TOGOLAND; DA

HOMEY; LAGOS.

Slavery and Slave Trade. The desire to obtain freedom from drudgery by the possession of and absolute control over one or more of one's fellow-beings appears to be inherent in the nature of men; and even certain species of ants are accustomed to capture other species, and to force them to labor for their captors, and to provide them with food. Among savages and the inferior types of civilized men this tendency usually manifests itself in the habit of assigning all disagreeable work to women, the man only following those pursuits which please him. Where polygamy is practised, it frequently happens that the lord and master increases the number of his wives more for the sake of using them as slaves than from any motive approaching affection. But organized slavery generally consists in the subjugation of one race by another, the subject people being condemned to a life of enforced labor for the benefit of their lords. It is contended, indeed, by J. S. Stuart-Glennie that the main determining condition generally of the origins of civilization has been a conflict between higher and lower races, resulting in the former reducing the latter to a state of vassalage. It is obvious that the leisure essential to the advancement of thought, the practice of the arts and sciences, and the creation of a refined society, cannot exist in a community whose members are all engaged in a struggle for the common necessaries of life. Anyway slavery was a recognized feature of the early civilizations. The ancient literature of the Chaldæans shows a due regulation of all matters relating to slaves, one remarkable circumstance being that female slaves were absolutely at the disposal of their master as concubines, and that they even resented as a slight the omission on his part to exercise his legal right in this matter. Not improbably the jus prima noctis of Europe is derived from this source. At one

period in Babylonia many of the slaves were Jews, and the Jews were also in bondage to the Egyptians. Nevertheless, the Jews were slaveholders in their turn. For the crime of selling a free man as a slave, the punishment was death. But fathers were allowed to sell their own daughters into an actual state of bondage; and the creditors of an insolvent debtor were entitled to sell him, his wife, and his children as slaves. A man reduced to poverty could even sell himself. All these instances relate to people of Hebrew race, and not to foreigners. Frequently the bondage was limited in time and character; but sometimes it became lifelong (e.g. Exod. 21:6), and the bondman for life was marked by a hole bored in his ear.

In India the Chandala tribes, assumed to be conquered aborigines, were enslaved by the Hindu invaders. Of these serfs the Hindu law recognized fifteen different classes. Early Japanese history also reveals a system of slavery, although, as among the Jews, intermarriage between bond and free seems to have been not uncommon. These slaves appear to have been often low - caste Japanese; but there is mention also of captives taken in war (Koreans, Malays, and others) who were held as bondsmen.

Among the Greeks slaves were often prisoners of war, as well as natives of the soil. Their condition was announced to all men in letters tattooed upon their foreheads in blue or red. The helots of Sparta are believed to have been the dregs of the aboriginal race, conquered by the Dorians. The household of a Roman patrician included his slaves as well as his own family, and over all these he exercised despotic power. The Greek and Roman galleys were rowed by slaves, and indeed galley-slaves were employed long after the decay of the Roman empire. On the other hand, the Celts enslaved their Saxon captives, and the Saxons retaliated by enslaving Celts. Those serfs of early Britain were obliged to wear a metal collar, the ends soldered together, inscribed with their own and their master's names, a usage which continued in Scotland down to the dawn of the 18th century in connection with those condemned by the state to be perpetual servants' of their masters. The state of serfdom persisted in all the countries of Europe until quite recent times. (See SERF.) The 'salters and colliers' in Scotland continued to be so treated until emancipated by an act of Parliament of 1775, the terms of which proved so inadequate that a supplementary act was found necessary in 1799.

were pur

'Indented servants chased by Virginian planters during the 18th century alike from kidnappers and from government, the term of indenture varying from five to seven years. The atrocious system of kidnapping British children for deportation to the N. American colonies as slaves was carried on in Aberdeenshire as recently as 1744. But the great development of the African slave trade in the 18th century was itself sufficient to put an end to the traffic in white slaves. Negro slavery is of very ancient date in the Old World, and it spread into the newer lands discovered and colonized by European nations in the 15th century and afterwards. But it reached its height in the 18th century. Prior to 1792 the East India Company used to put to death any slave, male or female, in the island of St. Helena, who struck a white person with a weapon, unless that white person had been the associate of slaves. For an ordinary attempt to strike a white person without a weapon, a male slave suffered castration, and a female had both ears cut off, was branded in the forehead and both cheeks, and was severely whipped.' Runaways were branded in the forehead with the letter R. In Jamaica slaves were branded on the shoulder with their owners' initials with a brand dipped in burning spirits.

African slavery was introduced into the English colonies in America in 1619, when a cargo of slaves was landed in Virginia by a Dutch slave-ship. For some years the institution spread slowly; later, with the great development in tobacco culture, importation became more rapid, and by 1740 about 140,000 negro slaves had been imported into the colonies. Experiments with InIdian slaves were also tried in several of the colonies, but these proved unsatisfactory, increasing greatly the danger of Indian mas

sacres.

In the Southern colonies many of the Indians taken in war were carried to the West Indies, where they were exchanged for negroes.

At first negro slaves were assimilated by custom and law to the status of indentured servants, the slave, however, being bound for life. Before the end of the 17th century the status of slaves, as it existed in later American history, had been established by law. The property rights of the master to his slave, and to the issue of female slaves, were practically absolute. In the latter half of the 18th century the number of slaves had in some of the colonies become so great as to excite apprehensions of slave insurrection, and several of the

colonial legislatures endeavored by duties and prohibitions to restrict further importation. Such restrictive laws were in some cases disallowed by the British government as prejudicial to the interests of British merchants engaged in the slave-trade, and to those of the new planters in the colonies who would have been forced to buy slaves at monopoly prices from the old planters had they not been enabled to import them from Africa. At the time of the Revolution a strong sentiment against slavery existed in both North and South, owing partly to the enthusiasm for liberty created by the war, and partly to the fact that decades of over-production of tobacco, the staple crop in the South, had greatly impaired the profitableness of the institution. Virginia in 1778 prohibited further importation of slaves, and by 1790 most of the other states had done likewise. Slavery was abolished in 1780 in Pennsylvania, and by 1804 in every other Northern state. In the meantime the inventions of machinery in the cotton industry in England (1775-85) and the invention of the cotton-gin in America (1793) opened up a new field for the profitable use of slave labor. Cotton-growing extended with remarkable rapidity, and slaves rose in price from an average of $300 in 1792 to $450 in 1800. South Carolina, which in 1787 had prohibited the importation of slaves, reopened her ports to the slave trade in 1803. In 1807 Congress enacted a law prohibiting further importations of slaves into the United States. The law was not enforced with any degree of severity, and the smuggling of slaves continued, sometimes on an extensive scale, down to the Civil War. The illicit importations, together with the natural increase of the slave population, swelled the number of slaves to nearly four million before the abolition of the institution.

In a number of the states laws were enacted penalizing certain forms of cruelty to slaves; but these were rarely enforceable, owing to the principle, universally held in the slave states, that the testimony of a slave could not be employed as evidence. Local custom was practically the only force mitigating the rigors of the institution. Among the better classes of slaveholders there was a dispositon to avoid the separation of slave families, and to grant certain other limited rights to the slaves.

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. -Slave labor proved efficient only in the cultivation of crops

Slavery and Slave Trade

affording opportunity for the working of men in gangs under trained overseers. In the greater part of the South cotton and tobacco were the only crops of this nature; in limited districts rice and sugar were profitably grown by slave labor. Cotton and tobacco quickly exhausted the fertility of the soil; hence it was necessary for the planter to take up large tracts of land in order to have new fields when the old ones were worn out. A consequence of this was the constant demand for new slave territory-a demand which brought on the Mexican War, as well as frequent schemes for the annexation of Cuba. Large plantations were the most profitable; hence a tendency during the existence of slavery for the concentration of slaves and landed wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Slave labor could not be profitably employed in manufacture, and the general contempt in which manual labor was held, growing out of the existence of slavery, prevented the native white non-slaveholding population from seeking employment in factories; moreover, immigrants from Europe, who were rapidly building up manufactures in the North, avoided the slave states. Hence the whole region became dependent upon the North and Europe for manufactured goods; and this dependence upon imported manufactures early in the century committed the South absolutely to free trade. Even the ordinary mercantile business of the South was largely in_the hands of Northerners and Englishmen, owing to the absorption of Southern capital by investments in land and slaves.

The necessity of protecting slavery against interference by the Federal Government forced Southern statesmen to adopt the extreme states' rights view of the relations of the Federal and state governments. As, with increase in population and wealth, the North was steadily gaining in political power, which would eventually endanger the local institutions of the South, Southern politicians gave adherence to the view that any state might secede from the Union at will. In order to extend the slave power into the new territories, Southerners held that the territories were the common property of the states, not of the Federal government; hence the latter had no right to prohibit slavery in the territories, since the institution was recognized in some of the states. Thus the general effect of slavery was to create in the South an economic and political oligarchy, completely united in adherence to territorial expansion, free trade, and states' rights.

251

This

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.-As early as 1760 the Quakers in Pennsylvania made the holding of slaves, and trade in slaves, subjects for church discipline. In 1774 an abolition society was formed in Pennsylvania, and within a few years similar societies were in existence in New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia, and New Jersey. These societies looked toward the gradual emancipation of the slaves, with compensation, where necessary, to the masters; and their activities aroused no antagonism even among the slaveholders. A popular plan of the early abolitionists was the colonization of freedmen in Africa, since it was not believed that white and black could well live side by side in freedom. A society having colonization for its object was founded in New Jersey in 1816; later in the same year a National Colonization Society was formed. In 1821 a colony of liberated slaves was started at Cape Mesurado, Africa. grew in numbers, and in 1847 declared itself an independent republic under the name of Liberia. The plans of colonization societies, however, proved futile, so far as reducing the number of slaves was concerned. Moreover, the constant rise in the value of slaves made the burden of compensating the masters a serious one. About 1830 the abolition movement changed its character. Under the leadership of such men as Lundy, Garrison, Weld, May, and Phillips, an agitation was carried on for the immediate emancipation of all slaves in America. This movement soon aroused the hostility of the South, and of certain classes in the North; and frequent riots, with many cases of violence against the abolitionists, marked the progress of the agitation. Statutes were passed in some of the Southern states penalizing the conducting of abolitionist meetings and the circulation of abolitionist literature; Southern postmasters, with the consent of the Federal post office department, refused to distribute such literature through the mails. Sporadic negro uprisings, supposed to be fomented by the abolitionists, intensified the hostility of slaveholders against the agitators.

In 1840 the abolitionists formed the Liberty party, and placed James G. Birney in nomination for the Presidency. The vote was insignificant; but four years later, with the same candidate, the party drew enough votes away from Henry Clay to give the election to Polk, whose policy of expansion apparently greatly strengthened the slave

power.

Slavery and Slave Trade

In the remaining years up to the outbreak of the war, the abolitionists were mainly occu pied in assisting fugitives slaves to escape to Canada. In politics they acted with the Free Soil, later with the Republican party. The latter party, while opposing extension of slavery, did not at first contemplate abolition of slavery within any brief period. Abraham Lincoln, even after the outbreak of the war, favored the plan of gradual emancipation, extending through half a century, with compensation to loyal slaveholders. In 1862, however, slavery was prohibited by Congress in the territories; in the same year it was abolished for the District of Columbia, compensation being given the slaveholder. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, declared all slaves in the seceding states free; it did not affect slavery in the loyal states. West Virginia had already incorporated in its constitution provisions leading to gradual emancipation; in 1863 Misouri, and in 1864 Maryland, made provisions for emancipation. Slavery continued a legal institution in Delaware and Kentucky until 1865, when it was abolished throughout the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Following Lord Mansfield's decision in the negro Somerset case (1772), that slavery could not exist in England, a movement was started by Thomas Clarkson about 1782 for the abolition of the slave trade. Of those associated with him, the chief was William Wilberforce. In 1792 a motion was passed in the House of Commons, Pitt consenting, for the gradual abolition of the slave trade. In 1805 an order in council forbade the trade with new colonies, and in 1807 this was extended to all British possessions by the General Abolition Bill. Various efforts were then made to put down slavery in the colonies; but these were unsuccessful until the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1833, which put an end to slavery by gradual steps, and which arranged for the payment of £20,000,000 to slaveholders. Slavery was abolished by France in 1848, by the Netherlands in 1863, and by Brazil in 1888. Russian serfdom, formally organized in the 16th century, was abolished by Alexander II. in 1861. From the beginning of the 16th century the Algerine corsairs were the scourge of European waters, and thousands of white captives were annually borne to Barbary, there to languish for years in slavery. It was not until 1812 that the naval powers of Europe and the United States succeeded in putting an