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The beginning of the chocolate king

Milton Hershey was a cool guy who largely influenced western culture.

Share the wealth

Both the company and the town survived the Depression and continued to flourish, thanks to Hershey's singular vision and amazing inventiveness. Hershey would put this same inventiveness to use for his country during Word War II, when he oversaw the development of the high-energy Field Ration D bars carried by troops serving in the war zones. The 4-ounce specifically designed nonmelting chocolate bars packed 600 calories and could support soldiers if no other food was available.

The start for the chocolate king A.K.A. Milton Hershey was not glamorous, By 1867, Hershey's father had largely cut himself out of the family picture.

In 1918, three years after Milton Hershey's wife Catherine's unexpected death, Hershey transferred much of his wealth, which included his ownership of the Hershey Chocolate Company, to the Hershey Trust, which funds the Hershey School. Hershey's philanthropy kept going even when the economy struggled and he was nearing the end of his life. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Hershey ignited a building mini-boom in his town in order to keep men working. He ordered the construction of a large hotel, a community building and new offices for the Hershey Company.

As a child Milton's family moved lots due to Miltons fathers constant 'get rich quick' attempts and failures. Because Milton's family moved so often during his childhood, Milton Hershey’s education was hit-or-miss mostly miss. In eight years of formal education, he attended seven different schools and only achieved a forth grade education.

Milton Hershey firmly believed that an individual is morally obligated to share the fruits of success with others. As a result of this he made many philanthropic contributions to society, the most prominent of which is the Hershey Industrial School. Saddened because the Hershey's had no children of their own, Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine, established this school in 1909 so orphaned boys could have a good home and a better chance at life. To ensure its future, Hershey donated an estimated $60 million to the school in trust, as well as 40 percent of his company's common stock. The school's charter mission was to train young men in useful trades and occupations, but over time its vocational emphasis shifted to college preparation and business, several of its graduates have gone on to become executives and officers for the Hershey Foods Corporation. Known today as the Milton Hershey School, the 10,000-acre institution provides housing and education for nearly 1,900 boys and girls whose family life has been disrupted.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Hershey refused to let the Depression fall over his idyllic community. While other companies fired employees and cut back their operations, Hershey embarked on an ambitious building plan devised solely to keep his workers employed. Legend has it that during construction of the hotel, Hershey was watching a steam shovel in operation when a foreman proudly commented that it could do the job of 40 workers. Hershey told the foreman to get rid of the shovel and hire 40 workers.

Hershey remained at the helm of his chocolate empire until 1944, when he finally retired as chairman of the board at the age of 87. He spent the 88th and final year of his life still experimenting with new confections, including celery, carrot and potato ice creams and a surprisingly successful beet sorbet. Shortly after Hershey's death in 1945, the chairman of the board of the National City Bank of New York would proclaim, "Milton Hershey was a man who measured success not in dollars, but in terms of a good product to pass on to the public, and still more in the usefulness of those dollars for the benefit of his fellow man."

In 1871, Milton Hershey left school for good and was apprenticed to a local printer who published a German-English newspaper. Milton did not like that kind of work, and the arrangement ended quickly.

After the print shop Milton Hershey's mother stepped in and was able to get her son apprenticed to a Lancaster County confectioner. The 14-year-old Hershey turned out to have a natural talent for candy-making and in the next four years learned the art and science of creating tasty confections. Four years later, Hershey borrowed $150 from his aunt and set up his own candy shop in the heart of Philadelphia. His first candy shop was a cart that sold caramel.

Milton Hershey

Early ventures

For five long years Hershey poured his sweat and time into his first business. But success eluded him. Finally, he closed shop and headed west, reuniting with his father in Denver who had gone there for the silver rush. While in Denver Milton Hershey found work with another confectioner. Milton's time in Denver is said to be where he perfected his caramel recipe by discovering the use of fresh milk in his cooking in order to make better candies.

Despite the success and skills he was learning in Denver the entrepreneur in Hershey was just not content to work for someone else, and he struck out on his own, he first went to Chicago and later to New York City. In both cases, Hershey found failure with his candy companies for many reasons.

Quickly, the Hershey Chocolate Company's success far exceeded that of Milton's previous venture. As the company grew and Hershey's wealth expanded, so did his vision for creating this model community in his home region. This model community town came to be known as Hershey Pennsylvania officially named in 1905.

In 1883, he returned to Lancaster Pennsylvania and, still convinced he could build a successful candy company, started the Lancaster Caramel Company.

Success soon followed and within a few short years, Hershey had a thriving business and was shipping his caramels all over the country.

It may seem surprising today when a chocolate bar is very cheap, but at one time, chocolate was considered a luxury. Before the early 1900s, all chocolate was handmade through a time consuming and costly process that made chocolate very expensive and affordable only to the rich. But Milton Hershey was determined to change that. Like Henry Ford, whose assembly line process modernized the automobile industry, Hershey modernized the chocolate industry. By developing and using innovative machinery that eliminated the need to make and wrap chocolate by hand, Hershey introduced the first method for mass producing chocolate at affordable prices so everyone could enjoy.

Entrepreneur Milton Snavely Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. He was the only surviving child of Veronica Snavely and Henry Hershey. Born on a farm outside of Derry Church Pennsylvania a small farming community in the central part of the state. Milton Hershey spent the younger years of his life trailing his father, a dreamer, who always had his eye out for the next big opportunity. Despite this effort however, Milton's father never found success and usually found failure instead.

There are many stories of Milton Hershey's reason for choosing to build his chocolate factory in Derry Township where he was born. But from the very beginning, it seemed that Milton Hershey looked for an area that was rich in dairying to provide the fresh milk needed for making milk chocolate. His far-reaching plans were to build not only a manufacturing plant but also a model town.

In 1903, ground was broken on a six acre plot in a cornfield. This was the humble beginning of the Hershey Chocolate Corporation which would someday become the largest chocolate manufacturing plant in the world.

Start of success

In 1900 Milton Hershey sold the Lancaster Caramel Company for an at the time astonishing $1 million dollars. Three years later he began building a mammoth and modern candy making facility in Derry Church Pennsylvania. This factory opened in 1905, setting a new course for Hershey and the candy industry. The community Hershey built for his employees was impressive and modern. Milton made sure his city featured affordable housing with sewage and electricity, paved streets (with names like Chocolate Avenue and Cocoa Avenue), schools, department stores, a trolley system, churches, a library, a hospital, a zoo, an open-air theater and even an amusement park. Both the community and the company prospered, and by 1915, the chocolate plant alone covered 35 acres; company sales rocketed from $600,000 in 1901 to $20 million by 1921.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Hershey got an up close look at the art of chocolate making. He was immediately hooked.

His fascination quickly became focused on milk chocolate, considered a delicacy and largely the domain of the Swiss. Hershey was determined to find a new formula that would allow him to mass produce and mass distribute milk chocolate candy which was his curiosity.

One exhibit particularly captured Hershey’s imagination; it also changed his life. A German company was showing how chocolate was manufactured, and Hershey was convinced that this was the future of candy making.

Because Milton Hershey saw the potential in milk chocolate, he purchased the exhibit’s entire assembly of chocolate making equipment, and had it crated up and shipped back to his factory in Lancaster. There, he installed the machinery in the east wing of his caramel factory and began making chocolate all while his caramel factory was booming.

Despite his limited schooling, Milton Hershey had a remarkable knowledge of global affairs. So much so, that he kept his chocolate company growing during a serious economic depression, and two World Wars.

With the outbreak of World War I, sugar became scarce. At the time, the sugar used in the production of chocolate came from beet fields in Europe. Milton Hershey began looking elsewhere for sugar.

He would eventually establish his own sugar refinery and town in Cuba to solve the sugar crisis.

To those who knew Hershey, his generosity wasn't surprising. Shy and reserved, Hershey's quiet demeanor contrasted greatly with many of America's other business titans. While he seldom wrote or read, and had been forced to leave school early, Hershey was driven to make sure those around him received a great education. His display of wealth was rather modest, if not downright thrifty. His house and the community he had helped create meant everything to him.

Following his wife Catherine's death, Hershey never remarried and supposedly carried a picture of his late wife wherever he traveled. In keeping with the work ethic his mother instilled in him, Hershey continued to work well into his 80s. He died in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1945.

His legacy as a businessman and philanthropist continues to this day. The Hershey Chocolate Company has endured as one of the world's great candy makers, with brands that include Almond Joy, Mounds, Cadbury, Reese's and Twizzler. It is undeniable that Milton Hershey changed the way the modern world views candy.

Sources:

http://hersheyhistory.org/library-archives/hershey/54-milton-snavely-hershey.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197530.

http://www.hersheypa.com/about_hershey/.

http://www.mhskids.org/

http://www.hersheys.com/our-story.aspx#/home

http://www.biography.com/people/milton-hershey-9337133#final-years

http://www.thehersheycompany.com/about-hershey/our-story/milton.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_S._Hershey

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