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.

   3 more examples

   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.

   1891, W. W. M'Clung, “The mortgage lifter”, in Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Improved Stock-Breeders' Association, Iowa State Improved Stock-Breeders' Association, pages 62-63

   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.

   1913 January 4, “Why the "mortgage lifter?"”, in The Michigan Farmer, volume 140, number 1, page 6

   Four southern states have been credited with bringing Ben Davis into the world. A hundred years ago that would have been something to brag about. This apple was the leading variety of the South and Midwest, and for a time it was called a mortgage lifter by growers who made a small killing in the export trade, floating barge-loads of Bens down the Mississippi to ships sailing out of New Orleans. But the affair with Ben Davis was a matter of convenience. The fruit grew abundantly and, having the toughness of a potato, could be shipped with little damage. The goods inside, however, weren’t as impressive. […] One mail-order apple merchant has said of Ben Davis, “It keeps like a rock, but it’s not a very good rock.” Apple authority Tom Burford isn’t much more complimentary. “They used to call it the cotton apple,” he says. “Today, people are buying it for sheer nostalgia.”

   2017, Roger Yepsen, “Ben Davis”, in Apples, Countryman Press, →ISBN, page 81

   Synonyms: mortgage burner