Ralph was a custom tailor who was the son of a custom tailor. It was said that his clothes were so expensive, he couldn't afford them himself. This did not stop him, when he was President of ERT in 1971-72, from hinting that ERT members were somehow unpatriotic if they didn't buy stuff from his store.

His father, Fred Carver, came to Los Angeles from Kincardine, a small town in the Canadian province of Ontario. Fred would live on to the ripe old age of 95. He established his tailoring company in downtown Los Angeles in 1912. Ralph, who was born in 1900, went right to work for his Dad when he was a mere teenager. There were three other brothers, but they went into other businesses.

Fred and Ralph had a prominent location on Wilshire Boulevard. They soon estab­lished themselves as the tailors for leading Southland residents. Both Fred and Ralph be­came Presidents of the Merchant Tailors and Designers Association of America.

In 1932, after Ralph was invited by Durward Howes to become one of the original founders of ERT, he proclaimed his own personal solution to the problem of The Great Depression. "Men should dress better," Ralph said in interview with The Los Angeles Times. "In times of depression, there is greater and more prevalent insecurity. This de­mands more careful clothing selection. Keener competition to get and hold a job means that being well dressed increases confidence, which is manifested in an improvement in voice, posture, and ability to face others in business."

Ralph, astoundingly, went on to suggest that, upon arriving home at night, men should change into white tie and tails – since this radically different change in clothing would be sure to lead to a profitable change in thought. This was a pretty exotic suggestion in a nation with more than fifteen million men unemployed.

Most people liked Ralph anyway.