mortgage lifter

English

Noun

mortgage lifter (plural mortgage lifters)

1. Synonym of mortgage burner. Also used as a cultivar name and as a name for sires and dams in livestock breeding.
   • 1891, W. W. M'Clung, “The mortgage lifter”, in Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Improved Stock-Breeders' Association‎^[1], Iowa State Improved Stock-Breeders' Association, pages 62-63:

     This being a stock breeders' convention, we think it proper to discuss this question from a live stock or farmers' standpoint, and believing it will apply to a large section of farming country outside of Iowa, yet it must not be supposed to suit every section of the United States any more than the "McKinley bill" did. ¶ Someone has said that "horses are the big money, cattle the sure money, and hogs the quick money." ¶ Then which of these can we properly call the "mortgage lifter." At first thought it would seem to be the horse because he is represented as the big money. But not so gentlemen. If we admit that they are the big money, we must also admit that it takes big money to buy foundation breeding stock, and I think I am safe in saying that nine tenths of the farms that are well stocked with a good class of breeding mares had the mortgage lifted before these horses became a prominent feature of the live stock. ¶ […] But it will be at least three years before the beef steer is ready for the market, or the dairy heifer ready for the pail; then it is evident that as "mortgage lifters" horses or cattle are too slow. ¶ Well, how about the hog? Yes, my friends, "it's the pig that pays the rent," and if he is the first to pay the rent he will be first to pay the interest, and if first to pay the interest, then he will be the first to reduce the principal and the first to lift the mortgage.

   • 1913 January 4, “Why the "mortgage lifter?"”, in The Michigan Farmer‎^[2], volume 140, number 1, page 6:

     Someone sometime and somewhere applied to the American hog the cognomen "mortgage lifter." Was there a good reason for giving the hog such a name, and if so, why? These are certainly questions of interest to every farmer […] The question as to whether there was a good reason for giving the hog such a name is fairly answered by the fact that the name has stuck.