Sweet Success - How Milton Hershey Built a Chocolate Empire

Before Milton Hershey revolutionized confectionary, he was a three-time bankrupt entrepreneur with little to his name. Raised in rural Pennsylvania with a strict Mennonite upbringing, Hershey was taught the values of hard work, frugality, and community. Yet, his path to success was anything but straightforward. His early ventures in candy making ended in total collapse, leaving him broke in Denver, Chicago, and New York.

Despite creditors and family urging him to give up, Hershey refused to quit. Instead, he made a pivotal realization while working with a caramel manufacturer: dairy was the key to rich, shelf-stable sweets. After finally finding commercial success with the Lancaster Caramel Company, he made a daring pivot. In 1893, after seeing German chocolate-making machinery at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Hershey made a bold prediction: "Caramels are just a fad, but chocolate is a permanent thing. Chocolate is the future."

He sold his thriving caramel business for a massive fortune to double down entirely on mass-producing milk chocolate—a luxury item previously reserved only for the wealthy. Through tireless experimentation, he perfected a formula for affordable, high-quality milk chocolate and built the world's largest chocolate manufacturing plant in the heart of Pennsylvania farm country.

Hershey’s legacy, however, extends far beyond candy bars. Guided by his childhood values, he used his incredible wealth to build a complete utopian town for his workers, featuring schools, parks, and housing. Lacking children of his own, he and his wife Catherine founded the Hershey Industrial School (now the Milton Hershey School) for orphaned boys, transferring the bulk of his wealth and controlling stock in the company to a trust for the school. Discover how a man born into modest circumstances turned endless setbacks into an iconic American empire.

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey Alex, good to see you, man. Hey, Kelly, what's up, man? I'm excited to be back in the saddle doing some more episodes. Um, you know, we've had some really good ones recently, and I feel like our audience is expecting not only good content, but I gotta apologize. A couple of the episodes we recorded recently, I didn't sound that great. I think your mom even commented. And and you know, when your mom notices that kind of thing, it's gotta be pretty bad, right? Well, she's she's a bit of an audiophile, so you know, she only is she's got her techniques turntable and her uh her her bow speeders and her equal. Yeah, she's got it all turned up. Well, um, no, today I want to talk about somebody that I think you're gonna find very interesting. Um, this person was somebody that actually lived a little bit ahead of the 20th century, but then made it pretty well into the 20th century. He was born September 13th, 1857, and actually died October 13th on uh in 1945. So made it made it pretty half almost halfway through the 20th century. Yeah, good long life. The biggest well, I'm gonna give you this clue first, and this might this might just give it away immediately. Um he is most known to have lived in Pennsylvania. He's he's like a big-time Pennsylvanian. Who do you know that's a big time Pennsylvanian? Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Well, big Ben Franklin's the one that comes to mind, but he was before that. Right. Uh big time Pennsylvanian. I'll give you one Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Actually, neither. Neither. Um he he did spend a little bit of time in Philadelphia, never in Pittsburgh, but his his name is pretty much synonymous with uh food product. Hmm. Let's see.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Well, a Philadelphia food product. Um he actually had a town named after him.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Wow. In Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, yeah. Whoa. Boy, I'm stumped. It's called the sweetest place on earth. Hershey. Hershey. I I want to talk today about Milton Snavely Hershey. Snavely. Snavely, yes, yes. And we're gonna talk about his cousin Stoner Slate Snavely. Because I think that's the coolest name ever, isn't it? Yeah. Stoner. I mean good name for a band. It's like Geezer, you know, like uh Ozzy's bassist, right? It wasn't Geezer Butler. Geezer Butler, Stoner Snavely. Um, bassist for her lead guitarist for for um Spinal Tap or something like that. Well, he was born September 13, 1857 in Derry Township. Now, I didn't realize until I started looking into it. I heard her dairy township, but I thought it was dairy like as in as in cows, but it was D-E-R-R-Y, which might be like a Ireland, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Dare Derry Township, Pennsylvania. His parents were Henry and Veronica Snavely. Well, Henry, Henry Hershey and Veronica Snavely. And uh interestingly, Veronica was named um Veronica, but they called her Fanny. Now, did you know that's the nickname for Veronica? No. You like that's a common that's a common nickname in for Veronica? So they were Mennonites, so maybe maybe for Mennonites it was, but uh, I mean, uh is there a worse name than Fanny? No, and especially in the UK. It's a it's obscene. Right, right. So um his father was more of a dreamer and a schemer, not so much a Mennonite. He was a Mennonite, but he wasn't, you know what I mean? He read books, he believed in technology, he was always off trying to find the next big thing. But his mother was a very yeah, yeah, casualite, yeah, part-time, part-time uh Mennonite. It's like part-time vegetarian, right? Um, so you remember that song, Successful Vegetarian? Have you ever heard that song?

unknown 4:04

No.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Oh, it's a great, great little tune about uh his guy's girlfriend and how she's uh all these things. Um, and she's not really good at any of them, but she's a successful vegetarian. Always thought that was funny. Um, so he didn't have much education. As a matter of fact, when he was growing up, because his father didn't really work or didn't really want to work, his father, again, was always kind of like buying jack and the beanstalk beans kind of thing. You know, his father was um very much trying to get rich quick, and he moved from town to town. His father moved them to a place where they produced oil, moved them to different farms, but they kept coming back to this place in Derry Township, and they did have a farmstead there. And you know, the Mennonites were very close, and the Snavelys in particular, his mother's family were very, very close. Um, so close, as a matter of fact, that his uncle Elias, who was a Snavely, was his teacher starting in 1863. And ah man, Milton struggled at school. He had a hard time learning the alphabet, he got bullied by the older boys. Now, have you ever heard of scrouging? No. So this is something the boys would do to him continuously, and it it sort of uh I mean, it came up in the book, so it must have been important. If you imagine all these boys sitting on a school bench, it's where all the boys on one side start pushing and they push the kid off the other side off the bench. This happened to poor little Milton all the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Why was he always sitting on the end? He was asking for it.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

That's true, that's true. Go to the middle, Milton. Yep, yep. I mean, I mean, with a kid like with a name like Milton, that's that's you're gonna get picked on, I think. And a middle name like Snavely. Snavely, yeah. And Hershey even, you know, Hershey's Hershey's got a lot of things you could say about it, but now it does. That's true. Associated with chocolate back then. That's true, it's true. The Hershey Highway, right? Um, so this was going on. He kind of grew up during the Civil War, so he um had a lot of anxiety about the Civil War. Of course, they were Mennonites, they didn't believe in war, and they were northerners, so they really didn't believe in the Southerners or the Confederacy, but they did know that Confederate soldiers were getting closer and closer to the family farm in the dairy township. And at one point, he actually had saved, I don't know, like 11 pennies or something, which was big money back then. He put them in a in a coffee can and he buried them in his um uh cornfield. And unfortunately, after the because he was afraid the the Confederate soldiers were gonna come and take the money because they were getting close. Well, the the Northers beat him back and they didn't end up making it to Derry Township to the farm. Um, but then the corn had grown and young Milton couldn't find his coins, and that kind of was tragic for him. In a in a lot of ways, he reminds me of kind of Charlie Brown early on, you know. Good grief. Um Milhouse. That's what I'm thinking. So yeah, a little Dutch, Dutch German boy. Um well in 1891, he had done so poorly at school that his father got him an apprenticeship with a local printer and thought, boy, you're gonna be you're gonna be a printer. So the guy's name was Sam Ernst. Um, he was a German, English, you know, a German Mennonite who lived there in Pennsylvania. And because he had really been kind of bullied at school and hadn't had a great experience, he didn't have a very good grasp of letters. And so to be a printer at that time, you had to actually take each individual letter and put it onto the printing press, and then you had to proofread it. But guess what? You had to do it all backwards because when you printed it, it came out backwards. Would he be like what we consider now to be dyslexic? Do you think there's a possibility? I hadn't I hadn't thought about that, but it did say that he had a hard time with, and especially with the difference between capital and lowercase letters that really stumped him. I don't know if he was dyslexic or just maybe hadn't gotten enough education, but he and and then on top of all this, this was a German English newspaper, so half of it was in German, which he didn't really know, especially didn't know how to spell. So he he failed miserably. Um, Sam Ernst threw stuff at him and kicked him and basically kicked him out. Jeez, said said, You're not you're not gonna apprentice for me. Um, and it's funny because back then, apparently, they had to pay, the parents had to pay to give the kid an apprenticeship. So money had been spent for him to learn the printing trade, but the newspaper trade, but it didn't happen. So his mother pivoted, and and by the way, his mother and father were sort of um estranged a lot of the time. The father would be out traveling and and kind of trying to make his fortune, and the mother stayed home. So she did most of the raising of young Milton. Um, but she did get him an apprenticeship with a confectioner named Joseph Royer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he studied for four years. And this is where he really, really came about his his um, you know, his trade and his passion.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And so confectioners, like that's like hard candy, right? Like correct originals.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yep, yep. Those are the city.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

They're just taking sugar, they're just taking sugar and they're just like crystallizing it, basically.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, and and uh actually you lead me right up to the next thing that I was gonna talk about was um Royer, who ran this place, Joseph Royer, was very, very big on cleanliness. He was much nicer than Mr. Ernst, the newspaper guy. And first thing he did was he checked uh young Milton's hands to see if they were clean. Because, you know, working with candy, you've got to have clean hands. Now, at first he was really just cleaning things up and he was um kind of running errands for them. He would occasionally go out and sell the candy on a cart. They had a cart that he would push around selling candy, but eventually he kind of worked his way up, and the first job he had making candy was pulling taffy. Now, do you know how hard pulling taffy is?

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Well, I can imagine I've seen the machines that do it. Um, you know, it's all machines that do it these days, right? You see windows of like the when you go to the beach.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

This is 1875 or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah, yeah. For a and I'm picturing him to be like a scrawny little wimp.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Scrawny little snabbly snibbly driving him.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

So I mean he has like spindly arms, probably. He doesn't have the strength to pull taffy.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

I can't pull this taffy, it's too, it's not stretchy enough. Well, fortunately for young Milton, he actually was a pretty natural kid at making candy. And when he got the opportunity, he learned the hard crack. Now, do you know about the hard crack? No. So, you know, we mentioned confectioneries uh and the type of candy it is. It's it's typically things um like uh what is hard candies like nut brittles and lollipops and candy canes and toffee, stuff like that, where there's originals. The hard crack is when the sugar syrup reaches 300 degrees Fahrenheit, between 300 and 310. And the reason it's called the hard crack is because at this point, all the water is boiled away. There's a high concentration of sugar, and when you drop this into cold water, the syrup forms a hard brittle thread that snaps cleanly when you bend it. So instead of bending like the syrup will do, you you you can actually snap it like you can a lollipop or a candy cane. Or peanut brittle, probably. Or peanut brittle, yep. Is that how you make peanut brittle? Yeah, yeah. All of all of these things are made using the hard crack. Well, I haven't had peanut brittle in a minute. Do you like that stuff? I kind of do. I kind of do. Actually, a good good friend of mine uh named Chris Hope uh sent us a big thing of peanut brittle for Christmas last year. That's good to hear. I was afraid all the people that made peanut brittle of are gone. No, it's he he's in he's in Athens, Texas, and they make it there in Athens. But apparently he is a listener. He is a listener. Shout out to Chris Hope and his peanut brittle. Um apparently um young Milton had a knack for the crack, is what they said. Is this another Hershey pun? So he apprenticed with Royer um in Lancaster, and one of the interesting things I'm gonna I'm gonna mention several people from that time period that are dirtknap city alum, and also some that might be future dirtknap city people. One of the people that's not an alum yet, but I think will be, uh, that he saw while he was in Lancaster, he went to see him speak was Mark Twain. Now, Mark Twain was on a speaking tour. Um, and the funny thing was that he said, or Milton said, that Mark Twain's stories reminded him of his father's stories. He kind of saw his father's um, you know, that sense of adventure, that sense of uh not taking things too seriously. He saw that in Mark Twain, but he saw Mark Twain at the Lancaster Opera House. Um so after four years of interning, he was finally set free. He got his certified, I guess you got a certification in confectionery, and so he was a certified confectionery master. Um, and he decided with the encouragement of his mom and his aunt Maddie Snavely to move to um Philadelphia with his cousin Stoner, Stoner Sla Snavely, and his aunt gave him $150 to open his own business. Wow. Guess the year that he did this. Well, um, so that was like 1876. 1876. So think about what's going on in Philadelphia in 1876. Yes, not only that, Philadelphia was the second largest um city in the nation, 700,000 people at that time, and they had the Centennial International Exhibition, which was also called the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufacturers, and Products of the Soil and Mine. Not mine. Right place, right time, right? He fell in love with technology. He saw things that he would have never seen elsewhere. Um, things like the coreless steam engine, you know, was something that he saw there for the first time. He actually saw they had on display the right arm of the Statue of Liberty, which had not been completed yet, but they had the right arm there with holding the torch. And for a nickel, you could climb up into the right arm of it just by itself to look down on the city. So this is like a world's fair kind of thing. It was the first world fair. That's it actually was considered the first world fair.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

It's amazing. You know, we've talked about world's fairs on here before. It's amazing how influential those things used to be. I think they actually I was looking this up a a little while ago, and I think they actually still have them. Like I think Qatar has one this year or something, but they're not anywhere like they used to be. Did you go to the New Orleans one? Did you tell me?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

I didn't eighty-four, I think. My parents took us. Yep. I I think I told that story because I remember buying four Cokes, you know, my dad buying four Cokes, and it was like $14, and being like absolutely shocked by the fact that four Cokes could cost $14, you know.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

It's still that's still kind of a lot for four Cokes. Yeah, yeah. It kind of is. I mean, uh, that was over 40 years ago. That is a ripoff. Yeah. No, I've I've never been to the World's Fair. That um you going in New Orleans is the closest I've ever been.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Um, this was the one going on in 1876, so the hundred-year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and all that. Philadelphia is kind of the hub for all this. 10 million people visited this expedition exhibition. It's like everybody, it's like the whole country. Yeah, yeah, at that time. Um and and so Milton set up shop in Philadelphia uh with that $150 that his aunt uh um uh Maddie had given him, Maddie Snavely. And unfortunately, unfortunately, it failed. He couldn't really figure out the the competition, he couldn't get enough made, he had a lot of trouble. Stoner was you know doing his thing all the time. Yeah, I'm sure he was less of a help than he expected. So he ended up he ended up connecting with his father, um, who told him, Hey son, let's go to Denver. They've got gold in Denver. We can we can strike it rich. Oh, get rich quick. He went to Denver with his father in 1882, and instead of looking for gold, he actually um went to work for a local confectioner, and this is where his fortune kind of changed, not exactly changed yet, but he discovered something because at the time in 1882, the hot craze in candy and confections was caramel. So, what do you think about caramels? Well, I call it caramel, first of all.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Caramel, okay. Um, but I'm into it. Love caramel. You like caramel? Caramel apple is good. Yeah, yeah. Um, I just like the little caramels that you you unwrap. Um, yeah, I haven't had those in a long time, but and that's that's what they were saying.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

So you you like uh caramel macchiato? Well, I don't like coffee, so oh you like uh caramel on top of your ice cream? Yeah, okay. Well, at the time, most people who are making caramel or caramel, and maybe that's the difference, were using paraffin to make it chewy. Now wax, yes, paraffin wax in Denver. The people who were making the um caramel that he was or the company he was working with or the store he was working for, they used milk. And this was a huge difference. He had never had such good caramel before. It was it was a complete game changer, and he realized he had never seen this before. This was something completely new. So after a little bit more putzing around with his father, they went to New Orleans. We mentioned that a minute ago, just by chance. Uh, they went to Chicago. Um, he and his father eventually he settled in New York City in 1883, and he trained at a candy store called Hilers.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Now, if you're they doing all this like with horse and buggy? That's a lot of different places to go. And like they weren't probably they weren't flying there.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Probably train, probably some trains going around. Horse and buggy trains, walking.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Oh, that $150 went a long way.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Well, he he uh he ended up at this candy store called Hilers, and Hilers was the largest candy store in the United States from 1874, and it actually lasted until 1964. I don't know if it was as popular in the 1900s, but um I'd never heard of it. That was a big train training for him. Uh oh, and he and he actually opened another store in New York himself. Um, Milton did got more money, got more funding, and it was going okay. He was actually starting to have some some success, but after three years it failed. And the reason it failed is because his father wanted him to start selling uh two things. He wanted him to sell um these cabinets for display cabinets for stores. Like his father had some wholesale deal getting these, and he wanted his son to be a retailer for them. Yeah, and imagine at the time, you know, I don't know how you sold your wares. Maybe they were just in big buckets and you scooped them out. But this was a nice display cabinet, cost quite a bit of money. But you don't go into a candy store and buy one of those, right? No, it sounds like he and his dad were on different wavelengths. Very much so. He loved his dad, but his dad was uh he was like I said, a schemer and a dreamer. But his father's biggest mistake was he wanted his son to start making cough drops. You know, he noticed a lot of people coughing and sniffing and sneezing in New York, and he thought we can make cough drops and make a make a fortune. The problem was there was already a saturated market, and there was a company called Smith Brothers that made cough drops that was already very popular, so didn't didn't work out. I guess it is the same process as making candy. You put medicine in it, right? Right, right. His father was a medicine man, he had some uh snake oil that he wanted to put in it.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

I wonder if they had to be like FDA approved back then. I really doubt it. They probably had like cocaine in them or something.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah, yeah. Cocaine, uh you know, some of the crack was in it. Yeah, yeah. So so the business after three years, he shut down. He couldn't, he couldn't uh keep up with the expenses, and he moved back to Lancaster, where where he had um done his first internship, and he started the Lancaster Caramel Company. Now, again, this was his third business venture. He had to borrow money from his um Aunt Maddie. Um, it was really kind of a struggle because his family was a little bit tired of giving him money, but his Aunt Maddie actually put her house up for um collateral so he could borrow the money, $700. And he started working on this recipe with milk that he had learned in Denver. And one interesting thing I didn't know is that actually uh different cows, different types of cows, um, like a Guernsey cow or a Jersey cow or a Hereford cow. I mean, I'm I'm not sure which of these give milk. But the ones that give milk have different milk fat contents. And so the type of cow you use to get the milk makes a big difference. Well, he he learned that and he he dialed it in and he got these things to taste fantastic and he called them Crystal A caramels or caramels. I think caramels, but so he was using the milk to make caramel. Yes, yes, which again, most people were using paraffin wax. So this was a different this was a different way of making it. Well, he happened to say was it cheaper? No, not necessarily cheaper, but just well, better, tasted better, creamier. But here was the other big thing, they lasted longer. So I and this doesn't make sense to me. It seems like using milk would make them spoil faster, um, versus paraffin wax, but apparently the paraffin wax ones only lasted a few days before they went rancid. Whereas with the with the milk, it was condensed milk. They would condense and sweeten the milk, and that's that's how they would do it. But with the condensed milk, it would last months, which came in handy when he met a customer, a candy importer by the name of Mr. Deces, who was from England, came into the shop. Actually, I don't think he had a shop at the time. I think he was doing all this by pushcart. He had borrowed money to get a little pushcart, and he's walking around, and Mr. Deces comes up, buys some of these crystal A caramels, and turns around and says, Boy, these are really good. And, you know, of course, Milton says, Thank you. And he says, My name is Mr. Dcesy's. I am from England, and I'm looking to import candy for um wholesalers or retailers in England. Um, would you be interested? So um Milton had to go out, borrow more money. Um, that he already he already had borrowed money against his um Aunt Maddie's house, borrowed more money, and built a bigger factory so he could accommodate. Well, he made a bunch of these crystal A caramels, gave them to Mr. DC's, packed them all up, and then he's stressing because he's like, what if they store them next to the boiler room and they melt? Or what if they fall overboard on the ship? Or what if, you know, what if, what if, what if? Well, about two weeks later, he receives a check from Mr. DC's for 500 pounds, which I think pounds have always been worth more than dollars, and it covered his loans. He was able to pay everybody back, he was able to ramp up, and pretty soon the Lancaster Caramel Company was employing 1,300 workers in two factories.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Why do you keep calling him Mr. DC's? Is it because you don't know his name or because you're just that's what everybody refers to him as?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

That's that's what the book said. I don't know his name. I don't even know how he spelled DC's. I would just put DC apostrophe out. Everyone just called him Mr. D's? Mr. DC's the the candy confectioner importer. Um rhymes with feces, right? So Mr. DC's kind of saved the day. Um, he's got this big contract selling stuff overseas. He has 1,300 workers, you know, flash forward to the 1890s, uh, two factories, and he was big on going to, I guess today what we call like trade shows. He went to a lot of expedition expositions. In uh Chicago, there was the World's Columbian Exposition, and that was a uh it was a expos exposition for food makers, you know, kind of like a food show. He went there and he discovered that um this company called Nestle was making this amazing chocolate, and there were all these um companies that were um starting to make chocolate. Yep, they are Swiss, and he'd had it for the first time. It was different than American chocolate because at the time American chocolate wasn't very good, it was gritty, um, it didn't keep very long, it would go bad quickly, um, it could either be too hard or too soft and melt too easily. And having this this chocolate, he was inspired to um start making chocolate. As a matter of fact, he said he believed that caramels were a fad and the chocolate was a future.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

So if this plant, this plant predates Henry Ford by about 10 years, right? And he's doing all this manufacturing. Now a lot of it was I was wondering, do they like they always say that Henry Ford, like you know, we talked about him and how he kind of revolutionized like the assembly lines and you know that kind of stuff. I wonder how you make candy without knowing about that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

That's why you have 1300 workers. Everything, everything is done by hand. You've got as a matter of fact, his his uh his Aunt Maddie and his mom Fanny were still wrapping um candies for him by hand, wrapping the caramels. They insisted on doing that, but he had hundreds of people doing this. Now, you mentioned Henry Ford. He actually became friends with Henry Ford later in life, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. Yeah. Um, so during all this, he gets interested in making chocolate. You know, he's thinking um caramel's caramel's old, chocolate's new. He also got interested in women. So for the first time in 1898, he's got a little money. He met a girl. He met a girl money now. He gotta get his courage up named Catherine Sweeney. Now I wish her name was Catherine Sweetie, but it's Catherine Sweeney. Yeah. Um, she was known as Kitty. She was outgoing, she was 26, he was 39, and she was uh she liked to sing, she played the piano. Um, she was just everything that his mother and his aunt weren't, and his mother and his aunt could not stand her. They they they all lived together in a home, but you know, they're they're these Mennonite ladies who wear these conservative outfits, and then here's uh Kitty who's just this fun-loving girl. But no, no, it turns out Kitty was No, they thought she was a tramp, probably. They were Mennonites. They thought she was frivolous. They they thought everything, as a matter of fact, they thought the packing machines or the wrapping machines that wrapped the uh candy later in the factory after after you know that became a thing, they thought that was frivolous. Um, they they thought everything was frivolous, so yeah, it's just ironic because they're making candy. Right, right, right. The most frivolous thing, the most unnecessary thing. Well, Milton loved and adored Kitty. Kitty, unfortunately, had some kind of an affliction that flared up pretty often. It wasn't it wasn't something that she had all the time, but she would get into these spells of being very tired, very lethargic, um, you know, just not feeling well. And fortunately, because Milton had the means, um, he was able to take care of her during those times and just adored her. He sent her flowers every day. He didn't send her candy because he didn't want her to get, you know, eat too much candy. Um, I guess he, you know, he partook only free infrequently of his own of his own uh confection. But in uh 1900, August 10th, the American Caramel Company approached him and offered to buy the Lancaster Caramel Company for a million dollars. Now, this is 1900, a million dollars. Yep. So a lot of dollars, a lot of dollars today, and a lot of dollars back then. Um so his his um deal with the American Caramel Company was that he would sell it if they let him keep his um chocolate making equipment and keep keep the Hershey Chocolate Company and just take all of his caramel business. And so that's that's what he did. He said, Um, basically, not doing caramel anymore. He took his million dollars and he really, really jumped into trying to make chocolate in the US taste better, which again at the time it's a good move. It was grainy, it was gritty, it didn't last very long. He felt like the Swiss really had it down. What to you makes a good chocolate? Like, have you ever had a piece of chocolate that's just sat for a little too long and it just gets kind of gritty and gross?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Yeah, and I when I was in Switzerland, I was really tri trying to figure this out. You know, they are really proud of their chocolate. And over there, they're they really like Lindor is the one that they always um see everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Toblerone.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah, Toblerone's a big one. I don't, I mean, I think there is a a sense of like creaminess that that that you know comes across when you're trying to like judge chocolate, I suppose. Do you like dark chocolate? I love dark chocolate. So does Jody. There gets to a point though where it's you know, that semi-sweet, like that's good stuff, but it gets to a point where it just gets bitter, right? If it goes too much, and then it's like baking chocolate, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Right, right. Which is terrible to eat. Agreed. Yeah, you don't want to eat that fresh fresh out of the fridge. I've done that before. Big mistake.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Right. Also, like if you had like a uh uh bean, um, what is it, the cacao? Cacao bean, yeah. Cacao bean, those are not good either, just by themselves. Well, you want the nibs. You want the nibs?

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Have you ever care uh carob? Um, I don't think I've actually had carob. Is that not good?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Uh it's it's different. It's you you're expecting like a chocolate-covered raisin kind of thing. But it's not. But um, but yeah, I think a milkiness is is what you're looking for, like a good bright, uh, like a clean taste. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, that creaminess, that milkiness, that that sweetness, and and texture is really big with chocolate for me, too. Like I it's gotta be just the right, uh, it's gotta be just hard enough, but not not so hard that it cracks your teeth. You know, there's uh like if you ever freeze a chocolate bar and try to eat it, that's I actually like that. You do? Yeah. Well, he he saw that chocolate was a future, he used the money from the sale of the Lancaster Caramel Company um to acquire some farmland near Derry Township, and he um actually purchased the first automobile in Lancaster. It was it was a Riker delivery vehicle, and it's funny in 1900, these early, early vehicles were electric. You know, we've kind of come full circle with electric vehicles, you know, it had a range of about 30 miles.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah, I think we talked about this with Henry Ford.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Yeah, yeah. It was it was like they hadn't really come up with the internal combustion engine yet. So he bought this um Riker delivery vehicle and he put Hershey's cocoa on the side, and he wanted to draw attention when he was delivering his products around. Well, in in 1900, he finally after selling the um uh caramel company, and and keep in mind he had been working on chocolate for a little while. He had the first Hershey bar in 1900.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Have you seen pictures of that delivery truck? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was painted. Does it is it like the same logo basically as they have now?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

No, the the logo logo is actually logo's actually pretty different. Um they they called it the the child and bean logo back then. It it looked like a baby, like a bean. It was weird.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Um because it's weird that their logo is so iconic, but it's really just a bunch of block letters, like it's just yeah, just the word Hershey's. Yeah, it's just a particular font, though, that's unmistakable.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

It's it's like FedEx, right? FedEx has um a very a very distinctive font. And I don't know if you know in FedEx there's an arrow pointing to the right, you know, that kind of says we're going forward. But so he he um he produced the first chocolate bar in 1900. Uh Hershey's Kisses were developed in 1907. And then really, yep, 1907. And did Kitty come up with that? Well, so it's funny because the the word kiss was actually a pretty common term for a little bit of food like that. Like a moose bouche. It didn't have to be chocolate necessarily, but they were um designed with these lightweight aluminum foil squares that were initially wrapped by hand. And then do you know what the little strip of paper that comes out was called? No, but I love that because that's how you open it. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

It's called the plume. Okay. That was a plume. I'm surprised they're not called drops because that's what they look like drops.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Yeah, they were called kisses. I don't know. Drops, drops, drops kind of indicate could could be something good, could be something bad. Yeah, they they were teardrop shaped for sure, but but the little the little thing that came out was called the plume, and it was one way that they distinguished themselves from their competitors. Oh, they had competitors. I I forgot to mention that even back in his days of caramels, he would write these little um, they would print these little um sayings, like little love sayings in the caramels, kind of like a fortune cookie, and they called them French secrets. So he was always into doing interesting stuff with the product to differentiate it and to and to market it, you know, including buying that car.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

It sounds like candy was something that you would buy for other people, like flowers, like as a gift, more so than now. It's not just like a snack.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Yeah, I think it was well, first of all, it was harder. You had to go to a candy store, right? You couldn't go to HEB or Randall's or Safeway or whatever. You had to go to a candy store to get candy or go to an event. A lot of candy was sold at operas, um, sporting games, where people would have where the the confectioners would bring their carts. So it was a little harder to get a hold of. And yeah, you did it for your love. The especially these um caramels were designed to be given to someone, you know, along with flowers. You give them kisses or or caramels, but the the caramels had little um little sayings in them, they called French secrets. Um, he was also big on the idea that uh the little plume that was in the kisses would have something written on it to identify it as Hershey, because that was a unique thing for him. He was always just trying to, you know, he took something that was sort of a commodity, he came out with the really good product first, he mass produced it, and then he did these little extras to make it better.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

But I I have a serious question. Sure. Um, I don't understand before air conditioning how you could, and maybe just because we live in Texas, um, and it just feels like it's always hot. How do you make chocolate as a commodity in in the summertime without refrigeration or air conditioning or anything?

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Probably ice boxes. I mean, you're right, you're right. If you had it in a wagon and it was 103 degrees outside, now now I don't think it was quite as hot back then as it is now, right? I mean, fair fair to say that our average temperature in the summer has gone up a bit. Um but even if it was 80 every day, but this is this is Pennsylvania. This is Pennsylvania. Um, and it's probably 80 every day for six weeks out of the summer.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I'm set off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Uh I'm in upstate New York right now, and you know, it's very comfortable in this house, and there's no AC. You know, it's it's probably 78 degrees outside. Um, so so I think it was because that was that was why it wasn't founded in Dallas, right? Wonder if chocolate was more of a seasonal thing. Could have been like Christmas and Valentine's. That that makes a lot of sense. Well, after after he got out of the caroma business, made his million dollars, married Kitty, um, he started to open the Hershey, um, the Hershey Chocolate Company, and he wanted to open it near dairy, um, dairy township. And he bought a bunch of farmland that was near there. Now, a lot of things were right about this area. First of all, they had a spring with very fresh water. So they had a river with fresh, clean water. They had limestone in the water, which apparently I think is good for brewing and good for chocolate making and good, you know, it made the water a little bit more minerally. Um, they had hard workers in the Mennonites, they had the cows all around there to give the milk. Um, so there were a lot of things that kind of worked well there. And in 1903, um, he decided that rather than just having a normal um um factory like most people, he wanted to actually have an industrial town for his employees. And it was going to be the model of industry, the model of abundance, the model of clean water, hardworking, um, well-being, modern homes with electricity, indoor plumbing, wide streets, um, infrastructure, schools, parks. And he bought this land, and as part of the perk for working at the Hershey's uh chocolate company, he would allow his people to rent these places cheap, give them schooling, give them um uh medical attention, all that stuff, public public transit. He even built theaters, he built swimming pools, he built golf courses. All of this stuff was built um in the early 1900s, and this town was like nothing else. It was uh it was sort of a utopia during you know from from 1903 to to today, really. How many employees were we talking then when they built that? Oh, it was growing. I mean, it was growing. He had 1300 at uh the caramel factory. Now, obviously, when he sold that, some of those employees went with the new employer, but it was thousands. You know, we were we were we were getting into the thousands, and one of the big things was when the Great Depression hit, a lot of businesses cut back. Um, he couldn't do that, and he had already made so much money that it didn't really matter to him. His personal wealth was not his um biggest concern at that point. So he hired the idle workers because people didn't buy as much chocolate, but their profits stayed high because the cost of everything, the cost of all the raw materials, the sugar, the milk, all of those costs went down during the depression. So they actually had less sales, but still a good profit margin because of the lower costs.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

Well, it's pretty amazing, though, when you think about a candy company surviving during the depression at all.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Well, you know, I've heard this, I've heard this numerous times that um certain discretionary spend things are sort of uh recession and depression proof, like coffee. You know, Starbucks does really well, alcohol, cigarettes, things that people are maybe vices, but also just small purchases that kind of make you feel like okay, I can't take a vacation this year, but I can have some chocolate. You know, that's kind of the thought. Well, he built theaters, he built the hotel Hershey, he built a sports arena, all of these things that are still around today, actually, during the Great Depression, to keep his workers busy and to and to be able to pay them. Yeah. He and Kitty had no children. Uh Kitty, like I said, was like 13 years younger than him, but um, but they didn't have any children. And in 1909, he decided he wanted to give back. He saw orphan boys who were not, you know, just starting to get into trouble. He wanted the the they were scroughing, you know, pushing kids off the bench in school. That was still going on. Probably, probably it hadn't evolved very far. Future dead end, by the way. He he started the Hershey Industrial School. Now, this was a place where I think initially they had 14 kids. Um, it was part of the old Hershey farm that he had that he had uh donated, and they had a couple that moved there, and they were like the house parents, and they taught the kids uh life skills, they did farming, they were positive role models. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

And and this like college or like for no this young, young.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

So so I think they took between like four and twelve, like uh four and twelve years old. So the boys, the boys had to be these were these were boys who had been orphaned, or in some cases they're they might have one parent. Um, you know, he felt like he felt like while he had his father and he had loved his father, his father wasn't around, and he kind of knew what that was like, and he wanted to do something for kids who didn't have that role model in their life. So they started the Hershey Industrial School. Um, and then in 1918, actually, Milton Hershey transferred all of his money, like a a huge, huge percentage of his money, including controlling interest of the Hershey company, to benefit the school. He set up a trust and he basically gave away a good chunk of his money to run this school. That was his legacy that he wanted. Another interesting fact is that in 1912, the Hershey's were booked to travel on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. They they actually they have a the copy of the check from Milton Hershey. That he wrote to the White Star line to deposit for their first class stateroom. They ended up having a business thing that came up, and he had to cancel those reservations and ended up on a different uh luxury liner. But had he gone through, he would have been on the Titanic, which was but the company was so big by then it probably wouldn't have changed anything other than you know him. Well, a few a few things still happened that were relevant to the company. Uh, one thing was he felt threatened uh by a guy named William Wrigley. Now you you've heard of William Wrigley, right? We did an episode on him. That's right. That's right. He felt threatened. He had heard rumors that Wrigley was going to start making chocolate. And in 1915, he he talked to his advisors and his cousin, Clayton Snavely, who was the um uh kind of managing partner at uh Hershey Chocolate. They started making easy chew gum, the Hershey company did. And so he fired the first shot. Unfortunately, a few things a few things went wrong. Um, first of all, um Wrigley got a hold of this. His lawyers, so their big scheme was they were gonna put six pieces in a pack instead of five. Wrigley put five pieces in a pack, they were gonna put in six. Well, somehow the lawyers convinced the government that this was somehow they were selling something without being taxed, and that that one stick of gum wasn't being taxed. Um, and so they ended up getting an extra tax on Wrigley's easy chew, um, which which didn't help. But then also uh during World War I, you know, this was 1915, there were shortages of sugar, there were shortages of chick-lae, which was the material they used. Yeah, and and it just kind of all fell apart, and he had to shut that down. Then then another terrible thing happened in 1915. Um, his wife died. She had been struggling with her health, and she was traveling with her nurse. She got a pneumonia or something and died pretty suddenly. The last thing she said to him, he said, uh, honey, is there anything I can get you? And she said, A glass of champagne, and he left the room to get her a glass of champagne, and when he came back, she had passed away. So he was pretty devastated, and uh his mother and aunt and you know, several of his uh close friends told him he should take a trip to to try and get his mind off the loss. So he went to Cuba. And while he was in Cuba, he just fell in love with the island, he fell in love with the people, he had never been to a place that tropical, and he realized that this is where so much sugar was made, and yet um he couldn't control it, and he could he could see that his competitors were buying from Cuba. So he actually bought thousands of acres of land and set up a uh plantation of his own and tried to basically do the same kind of um structure he had done with the people in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He built a town, he gave them housing, he gave them he he set up uh trains so that people who couldn't couldn't live in the town could commute and the train was either free. This is like in the 30s? Um this was in 1915. Oh, oh the depression.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Yeah, yeah. This is still during World War One. And and part of his motivation was that World War One was cutting off the supply of sugar. It was harder to get sugar, and sugar was becoming more expensive. So he did that. He actually received some awards from uh Cuba, some appreciation. He was very well loved and respected and liked there. Um he did make one big mistake that uh almost cost him the business. He bought sugar futures during this time, thinking that the price of sugar would continue to go up. And you know how you know how futures work? Yeah, so he he bought these futures, I think it was 26 cents a pound for sugar, and unfortunately the price of sugar dropped to like 10 cents a pound. And so he it it kind of flipped flipped on his head what he thought was gonna happen, and all of a sudden he was paying a lot more than his competitors, he was really struggling. He had to take out a loan, like a $10 million uh mortgage on the business in order to get by, but he was able to rally the troops, and you know, he was very well liked in in Hershey, Pennsylvania, is very well liked by his employees. There were a few issues during um the depression with strikers and some violence had happened, and uh that that unfortunately he kind of felt like he had always traded it treated his employees so well. Why would he need to, you know, why would he need to do anything more for them? And that kind of drove a little bit of a a wedge between him and his employees later in life. But in uh on his 80th birthday, this the town had a big celebration, a big party for him, uh, candles, a cake, you know, the mayor of Hershey, I think that the place had a mayor at the time, all came out and spoke. And he was he kind of felt like that was the pinnacle of his life. You know, he had worked so hard, he saw all these people that he was uh having a positive impact on, and then that night he had a stroke and was not expected to live. But he survived. He did live, and he continued to live. This was uh on his 80th birthday, he lived for eight more years, and during that time he went back to experimenting with chocolate. He actually was um um approached by the military about making now he had actually sold chocolate for rations during World War One, and when uh World War II came along as it was approaching, the military approached him again, and they wanted a special chocolate bar. They were gonna call it the field ration D. It was the ration bar D. And it had to have the follow- tell tell me what you think a ration bar would have to have.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

Um I'm wondering if you're talking about like in terms of nutrition or in terms of like durability. Yes and yes. Yes and yes. Yeah, so it has has probably has to be have some sort of like I wouldn't say protein, but like something that high nutritional value uh with 600 calories, and then be able to like withstand hot and cold, hot and cold, and be sitting in warehouses for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

Long shelf life, yep. Yeah, yep. There were three three more three more things. Um well, I think I said six hundred calories.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

I was gonna say you be easy to ship, right? Can't be too heavy or too high.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Had to weigh four ounces, that was their requirement. Long shelf life. I didn't say anything about that, but I mean, you know, it's a it's a bar. Um it was had to be uh have waterproof packaging, so if it got wet, it wouldn't be affected in the packaging. And then this was the straight from the the procurement officer who said it had to taste a little better than a boiled potato. Well, that seems like a low bar. But you know why? If it tasted too good, the soldiers would just eat it. They would be tempted to eat it when they didn't need to. So they actually wanted it to taste uh mediocre. They didn't want it to taste too good. Yeah, and think about it, that makes sense, right? If you had this awesome chocolate bar in your in your kit and you, you know, you were just out there in the field and you're like, ah, screw it, I'm gonna eat it tonight, you know. But if it's not gonna eat anything else.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Yeah, yeah. Well, or you it becomes currency. Um but did he make it or not? He made it. He made it.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

And they ordered the the US government ordered one billion bars. Whoa. One billion bars. The they named a B-26 bomber after Hershey. Um they they he got all kinds of awards for his support of the troops, and you know, he's in his 80s at this point, so this is this is quite a while into his. I wonder how they made it taste do you think they just made it bitter? So so because of well, no, no, no, no. It wasn't it wasn't that it was bitter. Actually, I did read a little bit about how it was how it was made. It was made in a different process. Most chocolate is liquid, so you pour this liquid chocolate into a mold, it dries and hardens and becomes chocolate. This was more like a putty. This the the the mold, because of the other requirements of it having uh 600 calories and being standing hot and cold, it actually had to be more like a putty. And so it was harder, it wasn't as as you know, as soft and creamy and all those kind of things. But um, but yeah, they didn't intentionally make it taste bad, it just kind of did in order to meet all those other requirements. That sucks. Well, but would you be the kind of guy would you be the kind of guy if you had a if you had an actual chocolate Hershey bar in your in your ration pack? Wouldn't you just eat it on day one? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Support the troops, and they deserve better than just some substandard government-issued chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Maybe it should have been in a glass container and you had to break it in case of emergency, you know, like that and a cigarette were in there.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Did they also come to Wrigley and tell them to get make gum that like wouldn't have no flavor?

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Um Does your chewing gum loop it's well it I think that this was more of a survival thing, right? This was something that was in their emergency. This wasn't their by the way, this wasn't their daily ration pack. This was this was a ration pack that was there as an emergency situation, like if all of the food ran out.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

So well, right. So why wouldn't you be able to enjoy it? I think you're making the psychology of this way too big of a deal. Like you're on their side.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

I'm not gonna argue with you, but but I I see their point. You're on the man side. General, it was like General Joseph Coltrane or something that that requested all this. Well, it it turned out that um from Hershey, the town of Hershey, actually the Hershey Industrial School, there were 38 boys that died during World War II, and Hershey built a memorial field to remember those boys. It was 38 acres. He lived to be 88, and on his 88th birthday, they actually had a meal for him at the old Hershey homestead that was still that was still there. And then um a month later, on October 13th, 1945, he died from pneumonia. Now he spent years perfecting this process of getting this milk uh chocolate to taste the way it did, to not spoil, to have just the right texture and consistency. And that recipe and that process is still proprietary and guarded. Like you can't tell, like you know, it's not common knowledge how that's done. There are some Hershey gums that exist today. Did you know that Icebreakers is made by Hershey? No, I didn't. Bubble Yum is made by Hershey. So they got back into the gum business, and those two are still doing okay. And then every uh November 15th, there is a uh ceremony for from the children of what's now called the Mil Milton Hershey School, you know, this this orphanage, which now is thousands of children, um, underprivileged children. They have a ceremony to recognize Milton Hershey, and in 1995, the US government issued a 32 cent stamp for Milton Hershey to honor him as a philanthropist. Nice. Yeah. When did he meet Mr. Goodbar? He was searching, he was searching for Mr. Goodbar. Now, uh Milton, Milton Hershey, you know, I I I had done Wrigley and I was like, I feel like this is a nice companion piece to that. I didn't know that they were they were rivals to some degree. Um he did become friends with Henry Ford later in life, and they both he respected Ford a lot, and you know, they both had this manufacturing thing going and were trying to you know eke out as much as they could. But I think Ford took a very hard tactic with it, whereas Hershey, like this is his family, the people that worked for him in this town where he lived, right? He lived in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He he was you know, he he was embedded with these people and he worked on the factory floor every day. He loved making candy. That was his thing. He was the Willy Wonka of the time.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Yeah, no, now is Hershey considered by chocolate connoisseurs over the world. Is it considered to be quality chocolate or is it considered to be like trash or American chocolate in general?

SPEAKER_01 57:16

I would say, I would say it's probably not considered an exclusive. It's like the Honda of chocolate, right? It's not Norman Rockwell of chocolate, like it's not everywhere, but not appreciated, right? Yeah, it's not trash. It's it's uh it's it's but it's also not you know, it's not luxury. It's it's it's every man's chocolate. And certainly one of the things that he did early on that made him successful was he made it accessible to people. At the time, the bad chocolate that people had, the gritty chocolate, the chocolate that went bad after three days and gave you heartburn, costs a lot more money. Hershey was able to, through mass production and through his supply chain, you know, he was able to get his own sugar plantation going and figure out his own milk. And, you know, he did all those things so he could actually sell it at a lower price, and that's why people today can go buy a Hershey bar for what, two bucks at 7 Eleven?

SPEAKER_02 58:09

He must have been an extremely wealthy man when he finally died, but he said he gave a lot of his money away, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Right. He he actually wasn't that wealthy because he had set it up for the school. He also had uh a teaching hospital built, he had uh sports arenas built. He he he was he was a big time philanthropist later in life, and especially after his wife passed away, you know, he felt like he wanted to give back um to the people that had kind of helped helped him build this. And there were several people, his aunt, there was uh uh a guy named Snebby, I think, who had helped him early on. I didn't get into him, um, but people who had lent him money when he was failing. He failed, he failed twice, big time, like lost a lot of money for the time before he was successful.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

And so and what happened to Stoner?

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Changes to Mr. Goodbar. He became their he became their chief uh their chief chocolate tester. The munchies all the time. He had the munchies all the time. All right, well, that's Milton Milton Snavely Hershey. Hope you enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

From a Pennsylvania morning, a promise took its shape, a kingdom built from cocoa with a highway to escape. Raise every cup and wrapper, let the golden banners fly for Milton's navy Hershey, King beneath the charcoal sky looked beyond the caramel, its tambourine was done, and we turned on a dark dream beneath the brightest sun, with repells like heralds and a town that bore his name. He turned the humble sweetness to an everlasting flame. The old protest, the new road calls ahead. A thousand fields of coast calls, that's cloud and stuff.