Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section33/Caleb Carter

Caleb Carter

Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section33/Caleb Carter
Born	1893 Asheville, NC
Occupation	Real estate, Mushroom grower

Overview

Caleb Carter was a mushroom grower from Asheville, NC who was interviewed as part of the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.

Biography

Early Life and Education

Caleb Carter was born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1893. He went to a private school, where he played football, before attending Bingham Military School, a secondary preparatory school also located in Asheville. He studied electrical engineering at a technical college before transferring to an agricultural and mechanical college and switching to civil engineering.

Employment

Before attending college, Carter worked at the Y.M.C.A. as a clerk and handyman. Immediately after, he worked in the naval stores industry in Georgia then at a traction company in Florida. He enlisted in the National Guard during World War I and was made a sergeant. After a bout of sickness that confined him to the hospital for weeks, Carter transferred to the coast artillery, becoming a lieutenant after training.After the war, he returned briefly to North Carolina, working as an engineer on the Bridgewater dam, before going back to Florida, where he married his first wife in 1926. There, he became involved in real estate, eventually quitting his job to buy and sell real estate full-time. However, he ultimately failed when the economy crashed, selling his house and losing the money on real estate speculation. His wife died in 1928 and he moved back to Asheville. Carter opened a real estate office there, which was also unsuccessful.

Mushroom Growing

Mushrooms growing in a bed in the early 1900s.

Caleb Carter started growing mushrooms after opening an advertisement promoting mushroom growing, selling spores, and describing how to start the growing process. At first he grew mushrooms alone in his father’s basement, building beds out of secondhand lumber, but he soon hired four employees. His growing plant expanded to comprise five growing rooms before moving to a larger facility with three times as much space. Carter equipped his new facility with modern conveniences such as a telephone, electricity, running water, and climate control; he studied mushroom growing in Pennsylvania to learn how to optimize his facility. The mushrooms were primarily sold wholesale to grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants, with extras canned for local stores. The majority of his time was invested in the growing process, in which correct soil and air conditions are imperative, and in building his facility. Carter and his second wife, whom he married in 1934, lived in a house above the facility, but after it was built all of their time and money was put into the mushrooms. They had to get a loan to finish building their living area, but eventually were able to fix up the house and were poised to increase profits, pay off loans, and continue to grow mushrooms.

A house and farm in Asheville, North Carolina in the 1930s.

Social Contexts

The Economy

The Great Depression caused immense damage to the economy throughout the end of the 1920s and the 1930s, gutting banks, spurring unemployment, and hurting markets. While the greatest downturn in the real estate market and the stock market happened in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, there was also a fall in prices after 1926. Once prices had recovered somewhat, they fell again after 1929 and did not recover until the late 1930s. Florida in particular experienced a real estate bubble, which was fueled by speculation in real estate and subsequent overbuilding leading to a Great Crash. North Carolina experienced the same problems as the rest of the country, with bank failures, foreclosures, and unemployment leading to widespread poverty. The tobacco and utility industries maintained employment and business, but other industries, such as furniture, textiles, and especially agriculture suffered. The state government also suffered. The government reduced property taxes, instead increasing other taxes, like those on sales; this regressive tax policy and lack of welfare exacerbated the hardships of the state’s poor.

Agriculture

A tenant farmer topping tobacco in Person County, North Carolina.

Farmers were hurt even before the Depression by a pattern of lending fueled in part by an agriculture boom during World War I. Farmers had borrowed money to expand, but then could not pay their debts after demand decreased. Crop prices declined and farmers could not pay debts or mortgages. The state government’s solution was a “live at home” program encouraging farmers to reduce production of cash crops to raise prices and allow for more food production, but prices did not increase.> The New Deal, particularly the Agricultural Adjustment Act, helped tobacco farmers, but did not help cotton farmers. In fact, it encouraged their migration to urban areas and the decline of cotton farming as a whole. Furthermore, this program helped mostly wealthier farmers who owned their land and had no provisions for sharecroppers or tenants, of which there were many, who were evicted in large numbers. Despite the difficulties of farmers, in the nation as a whole, the trend in migration was actually unemployed urban dwellers moving to rural areas, but by later in the 1930s the previous trent of rural to urban migration continued.