The Hog as Mortgage Tosser

This cartoon originally appeared in the June 13, 1912 edition of The Farmer’s Advocate. It depicts a man labelled “stick-to-the-hog farmer” happily tossing his mortgage into the pen to feed his pigs and proclaiming: “Well done - three cheers for the rooter.” The cartoon is clearly meant to lampoon those farmers who advocated sticking with their pig stock, by depicting them as essentially giving up the farm in order to do so. Appearing as it did in 1912, the cartoon’s author was making reference to a crash in pork prices that occurred that year. Hog stocks declined rapidly on Canadian farms as their value plummeted. It was not until the increased demand for pork in Europe that accompanied the First World War that hogs became a profitable investment once again. The “Hog as Mortgage-Tosser” view turned out to be prescient, however, as pork prices collapsed once again as the War concluded and an economic recession set in.