ftp help?

I'm trying to get ftp to work on Slackware 8.1 (a rather brokenish Slackware 8.1, but that's not the concern of the moment) - I don't seem to have any sort of ftpd, and no one can access my system through ssh (ssh works, I know that much. I can ssh out. I suspect that some of the access ports are switched around, but I don't know where to look to change that)
I can also use ftp to send and get files, so I guess what I'm trying to do is get ftpd working.

the main problem is whenever someone tries to log into my system, they get "connection refused," and i've no idea why.