Editing Pork barrel (section)

==History and etymology==
The term ''pork barrel politics'' originated in [[American English]],<ref>{{cite web |last=Drudge |first=Michael W.<!--Special Correspondent--> |date=1 August 2008 |title='Pork Barrel' Spending Emerging as Presidential Campaign Issue |url=http://www.america.gov/st/elections08-english/2008/August/20080801181504lcnirellep0.1261713.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080908001417/http://www.america.gov/st/elections08-english/2008/August/20080801181504lcnirellep0.1261713.html |archive-date=8 September 2008 |access-date=14 August 2010 |website=America.gov |publisher=[[United States Department of State]]}}</ref> and usually refers to spending intended to benefit [[Electoral district|constituents]] of a [[politician]] in return for their political support, either in the form of [[Campaign finance|campaign contributions]] or votes. In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public", [[Edward Everett Hale]] used the term ''pork barrel'' as a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry;<ref>The story first appeared in ''[[Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper]],'' Jan. 24 and Jan. 31, 1863. {{Cite journal | last = Hale | first = Edward Everett | author-link = Edward Everett Hale | newspaper= [[Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper]]|title = The Children of the Public | volume = The Man without a Country and Other Tales | pages = 97–175 | year = 1910 | publisher = Macmillan}}</ref> however, after the [[American Civil War]], the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' dates the modern sense of the term to 1910.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/pork-barrelling_n?tab=factsheet#10419806|title=Oxford English Dictionary|access-date=2024-08-26 }}</ref> 

Pork barrels originally came from storing meat.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Dictionary and Thesaurus |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pork%20barrel |access-date=2016-04-15 |website=Merriam-Webster}}</ref> By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the ''National Municipal Review'', which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "pork barrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving enslaved people a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.<ref>
{{Cite journal |last=Maxey |first=Chester Collins |year=1919 |title=A Little History of Pork |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IVEJAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA694 |journal=National Municipal Review |volume=8 |issue=10 |pages=691–705 |doi=10.1002/ncr.4110081006}}</ref> More generally, a barrel of [[salt pork]] was a common [[larder]] item in 19th-century households and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novel ''The Chainbearer'', [[James Fenimore Cooper]] wrote: "I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel."<ref>
Quoted in: {{Cite book |last1=Volo |first1=James M. |title=The Antebellum Period |last2=Volo |first2=Dorothy Denneen |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-313-32518-2 |page=170}}</ref>