In , Milton S. Summer Halloween Christmas Winter Spring. Milton Hershey School. Hershey, PA Stories. Menu Menu Close Menu. History For many Americans, the name "Hershey" means chocolate.
Hershey The man who began it all, Milton S. Learn More about Milton S. Hersheypark Milton S. Milton owned the majority of the stock, and other holders included cousin William Blair and Uncle Snavely. To grow the chocolate subsidiary, Hershey brought workers from a Swiss chocolate factory to work for him and poached experienced men from other American chocolate mills.
Putting an able man in charge of the farmland, he warned him of Henry Hershey, who soon returned and was drunkenly entertaining and annoying the neighborhood. A wealthy Milton Hershey turned forty in He was remarkably an unmarried man. Many in the area believed he would spend the rest of his life working, living with his mother, and traveling.
He enjoyed trips to New York, Chicago, and Europe to visit important customers. For months he continued to make the trip to see Kitty. Milton would regularly travel the four or five hours, presumably by the Pennsylvania Railroad, from Lancaster to see Kitty. Two days later, when the news made the front page of the local Lancaster newspaper, most everyone in and around town, Hershey employees included, were surprised.
This was the first time they had heard of Catherine, now Mrs. He believed caramel had peaked. On August 10, , the deal was completed, making the American Caramel Company the largest caramel company in the world. Catherine had locomotor ataxia, a term describing nerve damage caused by later stages of syphilis. In their European travel, with the help of supplier J. Lehmann, Milton was able to tour the facilities of a number of chocolate manufacturers. It was also rumored that in this time Hershey worked in European candy factories to better learn their processes.
Back in Lancaster, leasing space from the American Caramel Company, the Hershey Chocolate Company produced all sorts of chocolates: treats like chocolate cigars, cocoa powder, and many more items. Hershey hired trusted men to go work for some of his competitors so that he might learn their methods. In fact, there was no American chocolate company successfully producing milk chocolate.
Only the Swiss knew how to produce milk chocolate and had managed to keep it a secret. But knowing it was possible, Hershey set up an experimental factory on his family farm and brought eighteen to twenty men to work to figure it out. With political corruption on the rise in Lancaster, Hershey decided to move. He visited the nearby town of Palmyra and found a patchwork of family farms on unfertile soil. From the empty farmland, the idea to create a chocolate town was born: a giant chocolate factory, a grid of streets—the two main roads named Cocoa Avenue and Chocolate Avenue—trolley lines, sewer pipes, and more.
By the fall of , the walls for the six-acre factory were beginning to rise. Yet, Hershey and his men still did not yet know how to mass-produce milk chocolate. All attempts had failed or turned rancid after a few days.
After a chemist Milton hired burned a batch, he brought in a worker from Lancaster, John Schmalbach. On his very first attempt, Schmalbach found a way to warm and condense the milk without burning it, creating a mild-tasting milk chocolate that melted in your mouth.
Better yet, it could be stored for months without going bad. That winter, Milton was traveling with Kitty in Florida when word came that Henry Hershey had died of a heart attack on the family farm. Three days later, the family held a cold February funeral for Henry. Fanny Hershey, who lived in a separate room on the homestead, was finally a widow.
By the spring of , workers were preparing the milk chocolate for mass production, rail spurs connected the factory to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and the village was slowly taking form. Hundreds of new workers came for jobs in building and working in the new factory. Milton was personally involved in everything—from street and shop design to planning the neighborhoods. Kitty would come to watch Milton.
By autumn, workers were able move in and rent modern ready-built homes, equipped with electricity, indoor plumbing, and central heating. Outside of the rental homes, Hershey sold additional lots for people to build their own houses—though the purchaser was subject to a number of restrictions on what they could or could not do.
A woman from Wilkes-Barre submitted the winning name: Hersheykoko. Not long after, the post master declared the name too commercial and the town was ultimately named Hershey, Pennsylvania. The factory in Lancaster continued to produce a wide range of chocolate products. By June , production had fully moved to the new factory. On the east side of the factory, a rail spur delivered boxcars of cocoa beans and sugar. By wagon and trolley car, milk came from the local farms and was delivered to the north side of the factory.
And on the west side, wrapped and boxed chocolate bars left by another rail spur. Hershey may have created the first US company to crack the code on mass produced milk chocolate, but it was his thinking behind the five-cent milk chocolate bar that truly set the factory into growth mode. Milton was not much interested in the finances and math side of the business, and he let men like the brilliant William Murrie who became president in and his executives handle this.
In , Milton introduced a foil-wrapped candy called the Sweetheart. The factory had tripled in size to eighteen acres in floor space , square feet. Despite his occasional temper, Hershey cared for his workers. In Hershey, Pennsylvania, a company town, most everything—from the trolley to the department store—was owned or subsidized by the company.
The company paid for the schools and the public library; residents, workers, and their families enjoyed these benefits. As a result of the company subsiding much of the town, property taxes were about half the rate of nearby towns. Milton even built a large park called Hershey Park. Covering acres, the park started as a nature park with landscaped gardens, a large swimming pool, and structures for roller skating.
Then came the trolley, a carousel, band organ, and amphitheater. Company executives spurred attendance with post cards, distributed by churches and railroads. All the growth and success for the company felt a little empty for Milton. By age thirty-seven, she needed a cane to get around. Nevertheless, the couple continued to adventure throughout Germany, Italy, France, and Egypt, leaving Murrie to manage the company. For a year and a half, they traveled throughout Europe enjoying their wealth amongst other rich and famous, including J.
Morgan, and William Wrigley Jr. By , forty-two-year-old Kitty would need a wheelchair and could no longer cut her own food. Three years later, she could no longer leave the home. Winter of things took a turn for the worse. Kitty got pneumonia and was taken to Bellevue Stratford Hospital in Philadelphia. The doctor expected things to get better. At her bedside, Milton asked if he could get Kitty anything. She asked for a glass of champagne. Milton fell to her side, distraught. After Kitty died, Hershey left the day-to-day management of his company to William Murrie and his executives.
Milton focused on creating: be it a department store, a zoo for the company town, or an entirely new town and sugar plantation in Cuba. In Cuba, he wanted a tropical version of his Pennsylvania utopia. After buying up plantations, the town of Central Hershey, Cuba, became established as a reliable source of sugar. Milton had the Hershey Cuban railway built: miles of track connecting his property to ports in Havana and Matanzas. He later built an orphanage in Cuba. And in the late s, the company sold sugar to Coca-Cola.
In , the company took a large loss after Milton made a bad bet on the future price of sugar. Yet the company succeeded without advertising heavily to consumers. Hershey did spend to promote new Hershey products to stores that would sell them. And the company also spent to promote the town and facilities, thereby increasing the brand recognition of the Hershey name.
In the s, Hershey was unchallenged in the solid chocolate bar business. That decade, Hershey released Mr. Most of the growth came from bulk chocolate sold to bakers and other candy makers, including to Mars for its Milky Way, Williamson Candy for its Oh! Henry, and the Reese Company for its peanut butter cups. Hershey Chocolate Corporation became a publicly held company in October , with an offering of common and preferred stock.
Milton Hershey was glad that a deal to sell the company in fell through. He had pieced together agreements with Colgate-Palmolive and Kraft and paid for a six-month option on Hershey shares but was suddenly unable to raise the money when the market collapsed that fall.
In the Great Depression, sales declined by half, but profits remained strong as raw material prices fell. The Not So Sweet bar did not sell so well and was discontinued in The later s were a time of unionization in America.
In , not long after the Communist Party of Hershey, Pennsylvania, circulated a leaflet at the factory accusing the company of slave-driving methods, the CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations attempted to unionize Hershey workers and demanded a ten percent increase in pay.
Three years later, he began building a mammoth and modern candy-making facility in Derry Church. It opened in , setting a new course for Hershey and the candy industry. Quickly, the Hershey Chocolate Company's success far exceeded that of its founder's previous venture. His winning ideas included the Hershey Kiss in , which the company's founder named himself.
The trademark foil wrapper was added in As the company grew and Hershey's wealth expanded, so did his vision for creating a model community in his home region. In the town that came to be known as Hershey, Pennsylvania, Hershey built schools, parks, churches, recreational facilities and housing for his employees. He even added a trolley system for his workers. At his side for much of this philanthropy was his wife, Catherine, whom he'd married in Unable to have children of their own, the Hersheys focused a good portion of their giving on endeavors that affected kids.
In , the couple opened the Hershey Industrial School, a facility for orphaned boys. It has since become a landing spot for girls as well and is now known as the Milton Hershey School. In , three years after Catherine's unexpected death, Hershey transferred much of his wealth, including his ownership stake in the Hershey Chocolate Company, to the Hershey Trust, which funds the Hershey School.
Hershey's philanthropy continued even when the economy struggled and he was nearing the end of his life. In the s, 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.
To those who knew Hershey, his generosity wasn't surprising. Shy and reserved, Hershey had a quiet demeanor that contrasted greatly with that of 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 solid education. His display of wealth was rather modest, if not downright thrifty. His house and the community he'd helped create meant everything to him. When it came to building his own home, he made sure the Hershey Company headquarters was part of the view. Following his wife Catherine's death, Hershey never remarried and supposedly carried a picture of his late wife wherever he traveled.
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