User:Cjr100B/Caleb Carter

Caleb Carter (born 1893) was an American agriculturalist that specialized in growing mushrooms in the city of Asheville, North Carolina. He was interviewed as a part of the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.

Early life and education
Carter was born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1893. He attended a private school there for some time, but finished his high school career in Bingham Military School where he played football. After graduating, Carter continued pursuing an education by studying electrical engineering at Tech and civil engineering at A&M. Despite the dual alma mater and wide coverage of the field of engineering, Carter never received any diplomas or degrees.

Although Carter never truly received a collegiate education, he made due through a heavy reliance on work. In high school Carter had managed to secure a job working at a local Y.M.C.A. After leaving A&M, Carter found work in Georgia in the Naval Store Industry. After dabbling around with working in the Naval Stores, Carter moved to St. Petersburg, FL where he landed a steady job with a traction, or railway, company.

During his time in St. Petersburg, World War One had begun, and like most American men, Carter signed up for war. Carter enlisted in the National Guard but never actually made contact with any enemy soldiers.

Later life
After this brief war stint, Carter decided it was time to get a job again, this time as a civil engineer for the construction of a dam. This was brief though as Carter yearned to again live in Florida. He returned to his job with the traction company but soon went into the real estate business, where he quickly lost money. Carter married while living in St. Petersburg, but his wife had died at age 26.

In these desperate times, Carter was living with his father, where he saw an advertisement saying “Grow Mushrooms – Make Big Money” and answered it. After plenty of research and talking to growers in Philadelphia, Carter set up shop in Asheville, NC and began his mushroom growing business. At the point where Douglas Carter (the interviewer from the Federal Writers Project) had interviewed him, Caleb Carter was pretty well established in the mushroom business and had received many positive externalities from doing so: he had a massive plot of land, with a superb home and mushroom growing facility supported by a town receptive to supporting local business. It appears that either the profit in growing mushrooms or the mountain life had settled Carter down, as at the point of his interview, Carter had been raising mushrooms for nine years, longer than he’d stuck with anything in his life. Carter truly enjoyed growing mushrooms due to the fact that he could help feed the town as well as provide for himself and his family. Carter stated that he expected “to grow mushrooms here the rest of his life.”

Access to education
Carter was fortunate enough to receive an above average education for the time. Being that he attended two separate universities and a private, military academy, it is assumable that Carter was born into a relatively wealthy family. He was a member of the 8% of the American population who attended any form of tertiary education. Carter’s experience in education assisted his career ventures, as he was well suited for the myriad of jobs he undertook prior to growing mushrooms.

Labor and economic issues
With a strong academic base, Carter was easily able to find work. Working his way from Y.M.C.A. handyman to civil engineer, Carter decided it was time to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. This took shape in the form of buying and selling real estate, yet with the fall of the economy he went bankrupt. His work ethic paid off though, as he began his mushroom growing operation. Unlike the 25-37% of Americans out of work, Carter not only found work, yet discovered his work to be extremely successful and enabled him to live a comfortable life.

Food production
Due to the rough climatic and economic conditions of the 1930’s, commercial agriculture was struggling to feed the American populace. This difficulty in acquiring food prompted a surge of Processed Food Products into the market place, as these products were not reliant upon means of traditional agriculture. These new technologies allowed for available foods with longer shelf lives, yet they contained a fraction of the nutrients of non-processed food. Carter was able to find a way to grow non-processed food for the masses through mycology, thereby maintaining the nutritional qualities of the food as well as ensuring people had food to eat.

Historical production
President Franklin Roosevelt Created the Federal Writers’ Project in 1935 as part of the Works Progress Administration under his New Deal plan. The intention of the project was to thoroughly capture the voices of America, regardless of social stratification, geographic location, or any other variable, to form a uniquely American voice. The project employed various white-collar workers (historians, teachers, etc.) and set them out to interview members of the American populace. In effort to create a realistic image of the interviewee, instances of slang and an abandonment of proper grammar are used. While this can recreate a person’s essence, it can also lead to a schism of what is “real” and what isn’t, as it is up to the author’s discretion. The story of Caleb Carter’s life is told through the single voice of Douglas Carter, a historian working for the Federal Writer’s Project that interviewed Caleb Carter. The inevitable reliance upon a single voice adds a certain degree of subjectivity into Carter’s life; some things could be exaggerated, skewed, or even falsified. With this, one must actively seek out notably objective statements by starting with facts, and then trying to piece these together with the implications and undertones found in the interview to create a cohesive, accurate representation and social analysis of the original interview.