Phats?

Reading an 1891 Inland Printer, noticed an odd modern word in a report of conditions in KC:

= = = = = START INLAND PRINTER:

The past few months have witnessed the lowest depression in all branches of the printing business ever known in this city. Retrenchment has been the universal cry and practice among proprietors, and as a result the newspapers have greatly reduced their number of regular cases; every member of the various editorial and reportorial staffs whose services could be dispensed with has had to submit to the inevitable; and the union compositors have deemed it wise, under existing circumstances, to give up all phats and pick-ups for the term of three months from January 4, at the end of which time the old rules governing these matters to again be in effect.

= = = = = END INLAND PRINTER.

Phats? Was this a part of the press or a kind of woodcut?

Google found one other relevant instance with better context. From The Typographical Journal in 1894:

= = = = = START TYPOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL:

The coming of the machines had cast their pall of gloom upon the twenty caseholders and ten or fifteen subs. It seemed to be taken for granted that the “phats” had been regulated to the satisfaction of all. The night side being in the majority had exacted the last bit of “phat” from the day side that could by any elasticity of conscience be taken from a helpless and hopeless minority. To the aforesaid day side had been left six slug heads to be divided among as many daylight printers, and these fortuitously came in before 11 o’clock A. M., some three hours before the nightsiders were called upon for afternoon composition for the evening paper.

= = = = = END TYPOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL.

Phats must have been a set of privileges negotiated in the union contract.

The only other non-modern use of phats was part of ancient salt manufacture. Google finds the same old passage repeatedly, with no further explanation or context. The phats seem to be a mineral found along with salt, probably short for sulphate. A distant metaphor. The more likely source is Jehoshaphat, a king who started out in the path of God then collaborated with God’s enemies.

= = = = = START TYPOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL:

How like all real history these minutes read, when you come to analyze them. The chief occupation then, as now, was in changing the “rules of the game.” Every page of nation and world history betrays that someone was dissatisfied with prevailing conditions and did what he could to make them meet his idea of justice, always, or nearly so, in most instances, forgetting to separate himself from the major interest. To “promote the general welfare” the “phats” were regulated and disposed of as became (though unseemly at times) a majority of three to one.

= = = = = END TYPOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL.

The dissatisfied element changes the rules of the game, which always mysteriously and coincidentally ends up benefiting the aristocrats… who were always sponsoring and instigating the dissatisfied element.

Trumping Jehoshaphat!

From Machiavelli to FBI to Bryan to Trump to Elon, it’s always the same.