The Man Behind America's Sweet Tooth, Milton Hershey

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Purchase all free clear mega packs today. Hi, this is Jem and Em from In Our Own World Podcast. My Cultura Podcast Network and Coca-Cola celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with empowering voices like Rosalind Sanchez. My childhood was in Puerto Rico. I moved to the States when I was almost 22 years old and I have so many dreams. I have so many ambitions and I've been so blessed to be able to come to this country and little by little with hard work and discipline.

Check that list. I have many things that I want to continue doing and accomplish but I was just a girl with dreams from a little island in the Caribbean. Listen to He Said, Hea Dijo Podcast hosted by Rosalind Sanchez and Eric Winter on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Coca-Cola, proud sponsor of the My Cultura Podcast Network. Hispanic heritage is magic baby. With cheapcaribbean.com you can get more food, more drinks and more fun for less money on your all-inclusive beach vacation. Like bottomless margaritas. Yes and going snorkeling whenever I want. Yes and moonlight dance parties. Yes and loaded fajita nachos.

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To search for the Our American Stories podcast go to the iHeart Radio app or to Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. An American candy store in 1900 looked very different than it does today. Candy was a special treat sold almost exclusively in candy stores.

Customers didn't touch the merchandise, store clerks did. The clerks put the candy into bags one small piece at a time. The many varieties of candy included butterscotch, toffee, caramel, molasses candy, taffy and hard candy made from boiled sugar in dozens of flavors and colors. Even though there was plenty of sweets to choose from Milton Hershey knew the one thing that was missing, chocolate.

Chocolate was sold in Europe and only a few affluent Americans had ever even tried it. Here to tell the story is Don Papson, the president and executive director at the M.S. Hershey Foundation and Amy Ziegler, senior director of the Hershey Story Museum. Here's Amy and Don with the story of Milton Hershey. He was actually born in a little crossroads called Hawkersville which has now sort of been enveloped by what is Hershey and his mother was a fairly strict Mennonite woman and his father was kind of a dreamer and always had big plans, was constantly moving them around from place to place because he was trying out new jobs. He was never afraid to take a risk but unfortunately that resulted in his family having a very kind of disjointed life. Milton Hershey attended eight or nine different one-room schoolhouses over the course of six years and he said that he only had the equivalent of a fourth grade education and so it was a difficult time for him. He had a younger sister named Serena who was born when he was six years old and she died when he was 10 at the age of four and so his parents who already had kind of a strained relationship because of their really different personalities stopped while he became an apprentice when he was 14 and at that point his father moved out and they never lived together again, his parents. His first job was actually an apprenticeship that Henry, his father, secured for him working for a German newspaper and I think that he got him that job because it was something that he would have liked to have done.

Henry was big into reading, loved education, loved reading about the news and learning new things and Milton really did not like that work. It's always been said that he threw his hat into the printing press and tried to make it look like an accident so that he could get fired, which he did very quickly. He did not work there for very long. So it was then that his mother signed him up to be an apprentice with a confectioner in nearby Lancaster County and that's where he learned how to make candy between the ages of 14 and 18, which I find interesting because she was very focused on hard work and learning a skill and she wanted to also though make sure that he learned how to do something that he would enjoy and not force him into a job that wasn't something that was meant for him or right for him, which is kind of what his father did. At that point, milk chocolate was not something that you could just walk into a store and buy.

The only chocolate that you could really get around here was dark chocolate and it was usually covering another kind of candy. So he learned how to make all different kinds of candies, not chocolate at that point. So when he started working there, he would often work the front counter. When customers came, he would take care of their horses and hitch them up outside and do things like that and his mother was kind of disappointed because she didn't think that that was going to give him the experience that he needed to move on and be successful at something and so she actually went to the man he was apprenticing with and paid him a little bit extra so that he would teach him more of the behind the scenes work and recipes and candy making and things like that. What Mr. Hershey did in the confectionery apprenticeship was learn the craft and the art of candy making.

And as anyone knows who has made candy, temperatures where things boil, temperature where things crystallize, all those kinds of technical chemistries of candy making come back to help him over and over again in the next 30 years. Without that basic knowledge that he gained with the Rourke Candy Shop and an ice cream aree, he would have never achieved what he achieved later on. When he was 18, his apprenticeship was over and he decided to go to Philadelphia to open a candy shop in 1876. And he started making lots and lots of different kinds of penny candies and selling them from a cart on the way to the street. And at this time, he had some help from his mother and his aunt, Aunt Maddie, and their family had some money, but his father was not very helpful with financing anything.

He was working very, very hard. He was making candy at night, he was selling it during the day, and it was exhausting and he was really struggling financially. And we actually have some letters that he wrote home to his uncle asking for money. And we actually have some that were written like more than one a day that he was sending saying, I just need some help, you know, to pay rent and things like that.

So it was a very stressful time. He did have some success in the beginning, but then the money stopped his hand, you know, stopped giving him money. His father came to town and they developed a candy display case that they patented that sort of looked like it was always full.

And then you could pull drawers out of the back and sell bulk candy, penny candy that way. That was an expensive endeavor. And when his father left Philadelphia to move to Denver, Colorado, he bought him out of that little business. And he ended up very soon after filing bankruptcy. So he lost his business in Philadelphia, and decided to travel around and learn more about candy making. So he went to New Orleans, he went to Chicago, he learned how to make caramels in Denver.

And that was kind of a big turning point. And you've been listening to Don Papson and Amy Ziegler tell the story of Milton Hershey. When we come back, more of the remarkable life story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories.com and click the donate button. Give a little give a lot. Go to our American stories.com and give with a Starbucks app.

You can make a moment with a tap. So next time you order your morning coffee, treat someone else and make their day to tell them you're grateful for them, or that you've got their back, or simply to say thanks. What's up, everybody? It's Xavier from the Trap Nerds podcast. Intel is shaping the future of technology. And as they help people everywhere create wonderful, they'd like to invite you to the metaverse. Introducing Our Heartland on Roblox powered by Intel. Our Heartland and Intel designed a place where music and games come together.

Where you and your friends can experience events from your favorite artists and podcasters and become radio tycoons as you build your own music studio. How cool is that? And when you visit the Intel House of Wonder in Our Heartland, you'll find upgrades, items, and emotes that will help take your experience to the next level. Like oceanfront views, a fountain filled with dolphins, and an upside down waterfall. While you're out exploring Roblox, be on the lookout for an Intel bunny suit, inviting you into the House of Wonder in Our Heartland.

You'll know it when you see it. Do something wonderful today and check out Our Heartland on Roblox powered by Intel. Go to ourheartradio.com slash Roblox and start playing now.

That's ourheartradio.com slash Roblox. Doing household chores can be very time consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming. And that was my last night.

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I see those loads all the time. Today, you can purchase all free clear mega packs at your local store today and conquer any laundry load. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Milton Hershey. And my goodness, what setbacks he had faced by this time, bankruptcy, traveling from town to town, but wanting to learn more. Failure did not stop Milton Hershey. It simply fueled him.

Let's return to Don Papson and Amy Ziegler for more of this remarkable American story. So Milton Hershey went to Colorado, Denver, because his father was there and he got a job with a man who was making caramels using fresh milk, which was very different from what most people were doing at the time, which was using paraffin. And the fresh milk actually helped it stay stable longer.

So it kept it had a good mouthfeel and chewy texture, and it made the flavor better. And Milton Hershey really latched on to that way of doing things. So when he started his caramel company, he also was using fresh milk to make caramels. And then in turn, when he switched over to experimenting with milk chocolate, he was using fresh milk in his milk chocolate, which is something that most people were also not doing.

So that was a real turning point. I think one of the interesting things about Milton Hershey during this entire period is Milton's mother's family was comparing Milton to Milton Hershey's father. And so they thought that Milton was all over the place, was a little too entrepreneurial, but through all of these ventures that had just been described, Milton Hershey gained so much knowledge about the experimentation, about entrepreneurship, about all these kinds of things that literally went into his repository of knowledge that he was going to use later. And so I think what you have here is this incredible contrast between Mrs. Hershey, Fanny's determination, discipline, regimen, and Mr. Hershey's kind of experimentation about entrepreneurship and other things. And so Milton got the best of both parents. It's interesting because they did see him as being a little all over the place and people told him a lot of times in his life that he was crazy. But what he had was the follow through that his father never did because he was really pro taking risk and making big life changes.

But when it didn't work out, he didn't just turn around and, you know, try something else. He kind of followed it through and did everything he could to make it happen. So his Aunt Maddie loaned him money to start up his first business in Philadelphia.

And we have an original sales catalog from that business. And there's probably 75 different items that he was making. So it was a very, very different kind of product list than what he ended up doing when he became really successful. So he was there for about six years, and she loaned him money several times during those six years. By the time he left Philadelphia and ended up having to declare bankruptcy, they weren't really bankrolling him anymore after that.

So it was a very, very difficult process. So he was moving around, and he actually worked for other people in those locations. When he went to New Orleans and Chicago, he wasn't sort of doing his own business, he was working for other people and learning more about it. When he came back to Lancaster after his New York business failed, he literally couldn't afford to pay the freight to get his candy making machinery and equipment out of the train station, he had to borrow more money. This time, he borrowed not his family. And that's how he was able to start the Lancaster Carmel company. So this is when they were really starting to get concerned that he was turning out to be like his father. And he wanted to start yet another business.

And so he borrowed money from a friend, and he rented some space. And that's when he started to focus really on Carmel's. Before that, as I mentioned, he had always been making lots of different kinds of candies and not really focusing on a single product. And so when he was in Denver, he learned a lot about how to make Carmel's with fresh milk, and he decided that that's what he was going to focus on. So he started the Lancaster Carmel company in 1886. And he started to make Carmel's that were coated in dark chocolate that became very popular.

That's when he really started to take off. There was a businessman from England who was traveling through Lancaster, and he stopped and tasted the Carmel's that Milton was selling. And he ordered a very, very large quantity of them to be shipped over to England. And so he was able to go to a bank, show them this order, and borrow money because he didn't have enough money to buy all the ingredients that he was going to need to make them. And so he was able to get some more money. And that's what sort of was the thing that really kicked off his success when he was in Lancaster. Milton Hershey had a number of pivotal points in his entire candy-making career. And one of the ones that is told over and over again is when the family snavely money had dried up.

No one was taking him seriously anymore. He finally gets to the point where he has this large order in hand from England. The only reason he was able to finance the purchasing of the ingredients for that order was because the cashier at the Lancaster Bank, Mr. Brenneman, decided to co-sign the loan agreement. And without that, he personally co-signed the loan agreement. And without that, he would not have gotten the bank loan that he needed to basically take his business and create a caramel business that became the number one caramel business in America. So the reason that Mr. Brenneman was so apt to be able to be a co-signer of the loan agreement was because he had tasted the caramels and visited the factory in Lancaster. And he was impressed with not only the taste of the caramels, but he was also very, very impressed with the productivity of the factory.

By 1894, he had over 1,300 people working for him. He eventually had caramel plants in Mount Joy in Redding, Pennsylvania. He had a sales office in a plant outside of Chicago, and he also had the one in Lancaster. So he was doing really well and was selling caramels across the country at that point.

So it was pretty fast. When you look at all of the struggle that went into getting back to Lancaster and starting over again with caramels, this was a pretty fast rise to success. And he eventually went on to become one of the most successful businessmen in Lancaster. Another pivotal moment in Mr. Hershey's life is his visit to the Columbian Exposition in 1893. So Mr. Hershey, by that time, had a western branch of his caramel company, which was near Chicago. And he decided that he would stop in to the Columbian Exposition, which has been heralded as the turning point for so many things that we know today as common in our homes. So first, electrical light bulbs all over the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and all kinds of things like that.

New machinery, new combines, all kinds of things. But Mr. Hershey is enamored with the chocolate display by a chocolate machine manufacturer that is the Lehman Company. And so he's walking through the exhibits and he is just incredibly overwhelmed with this chocolate display. And I have to admit, from the descriptions that we have, this chocolate display was incredibly impressive. It was an entire front of a house that looked like chocolate. And so he purchases some of the floor equipment and sends it back to Lancaster so he can start his experimentation.

And by 1896, he then establishes a division of the Lancaster Caramel Company, which is a Hershey Chocolate Company subsidiary of that caramel company. And you're listening to Don Pabst and Amy Ziegler tell the story of Milton Hershey and the relentlessness of this guy, the learning that takes place from failure. And that's what we learn, the relentlessness to pursue excellence in your trade, which doesn't happen in a year or three or five.

It's 10 and 20. And that's the journey this man takes. Then he gets that big order from Europe, from his caramel company.

And you would think guys would stop then, but no, what is he doing? He wants more. And he shows up at that Columbian Exposition in 1893 and he sees chocolate. This kind of ambition is so much at the root of what we know about the American dream and the American experiment.

When we come back, more of Milton Hershey's story, a remarkable one here on Our American Story. With a Starbucks app, you can make a moment with a tap. So next time you order your morning coffee, treat someone else and make their day. To tell them you're grateful for them, or that you've got their back, or simply to say thanks. Share the moment.

Download the Starbucks app. What's up everybody. It's Xavier from the Trap Nerds Podcast. Intel is shaping the future of technology. And as they help people everywhere create wonderful, they'd like to invite you to the metaverse. Introducing Our Heartland on Roblox powered by Intel. Our Heartland and Intel design a place where music and games come together.

Where you and your friends can experience events from your favorite artists and podcasters and become radio tycoons as you build your own music studio. How cool is that? And when you visit the Intel House of Wonder in Our Heartland, you'll find upgrades, items, and emotes that will help take your experience to the next level. Like ocean front views, a fountain filled with dolphins, and an upside down waterfall. While you're out exploring Roblox, be on the lookout for an Intel bunny suit, inviting you into the House of Wonder in Our Heartland. You'll know it when you see it. Do something wonderful today and check out Our Heartland on Roblox. Powered by Intel. Go to ourheartradio.com slash Roblox and start playing now.

That's ourheartradio.com slash Roblox. Doing household chores can be very time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming.

And that was my last night and it's pretty much my every other night. If you want to get those larger laundry loads done and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack. So you can tackle any laundry load with confidence.

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They have mine between spit up Dawson learning how to eat and Jared working at a restaurant. I see those loads. All the time today, you could purchase all free clear mega packs at your local store today and conquer any laundry load.

And we continue with our American stories. And in that last segment, we learned that many of the family members had sorted out their laundry loads. And so we learned that they were able to use their laundry loads to make sure that they were safe.

And we learned that they were able to use their laundry loads to make sure that they were safe. And we learned that many of the family members had sort of given up on them. And a whole bunch of people thought he was well, just crazy. And to be an entrepreneur is to be just a little crazy. Now more of Milton Hershey's story. His cousin who he traveled to the exposition with actually said that he told him caramels were a fad and chocolate is permanent. And he wanted to switch from making caramels to chocolate, which is so fascinating because he was so wildly successful by this point making caramels.

And to decide at that stage of his career and life to go to something completely different is, you know, it's a huge risk. And people were, again, surprised that he was going to do that. When he starts to make chocolate, he begins making dark chocolate because that's a lot easier. And so he starts selling chocolate novelties.

And he had in one catalog, I believe there are about 114 different kinds of dark chocolate novelties he was selling. So for instance, there were chrysanthemums, which were these very elaborate, beautiful boxes that had a pink chrysanthemum. They were round and the bars were actually sections of the pedals were individual pieces. And so they had to be molded by hand. And then they had to be boxed by hand. And then he had tennis cigarettes and Zuka sticks. And he had little containers that looked like mail pouches that fit inside a box shaped like a box car. And he had so many of these things and they were so labor intensive and expensive to produce because he needed people. He couldn't use machines for all of them. And all of it had different packaging and his name. There was no Hershey brand. Every box looked completely different.

Like it could have been made by a different producer. And so I think he realized that that was taking up so much time and energy when he could be focusing on just a few things. So while he's making these dark chocolate novelties, he's experimenting at the same time so that he can learn how to incorporate milk into his recipe. So the first thing he makes is cocoa powder. And then he starts making milk chocolate bars and things like that. So really, he did a few things to change the way milk chocolate at the time was being made.

And the formula that he eventually settled on worked for several reasons. He started to purchase beans that were less expensive. And he roasted them at a higher temperature to improve the flavor. So he wasn't starting off with really expensive beans, which is what everybody else was doing, and then creating a very expensive chocolate.

So he was trying to make it so that it would be affordable to more people. So what he would do is mix sugar with milk first, and then he would condense it because when you're making chocolate, mixing cocoa butter, which is fat, with water, which is mostly what milk is, is a very difficult thing to do. So he had to remove as much of the moisture from the milk as he could.

And it became more like taffy when he was finished. And then the other thing that he did was he was using mass production techniques like Henry Ford. So they always say he was the Henry Ford of chocolate. Instead of having just a few pieces of chocolate making equipment in a factory, he had acres and acres of the same machine so that he could do everything on a very large scale. So by the time he built his factory and had perfected his recipe, those were the things that he was doing that really allowed him to make something that tasted good and was also affordable to everyone.

And so what he did was he went from these 114 different novelties down to about 12 or 13 different things, and they were milk chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, baking chocolate, cocoa, and a couple of other smaller things. And so he never could have had a large scale production of chocolate if he had kept making all of these things that required individuals to mold them and package them. So we know that at the point where the factory is going to open in 1905, Mr. Hershey has not yet completely perfected his formula.

And he and a number of close-ins are feverishly trying to determine what that exact formula is. He has incredibly skilled chemists that he hires. He has other people, but he finally relies on a chocolate maker that doesn't have the schooling, but has the basics about chocolate making to come up with that final formula just weeks before the large new factory is going to open. The factory opened in 1905, but very quickly they started adding on to it.

So it grew very, very quickly. And by 1915, it was described as the largest chocolate factory in the world. Milton Hershey was traveling to Jamestown, New York in 1897 on a sales call. At this point, he is still making caramels.

He hasn't sold the caramel company yet and focused on chocolate. So he's going to Jamestown, New York, and he stops at a candy shop. And while he's there, he meets a woman named Catherine Sweeney, who grew up in Jamestown as the daughter of Irish immigrants. They did not have a lot of money, so she dropped out of high school and got a job working at a jewelry store.

But on that particular day, she was visiting some friends who were working in a candy shop. And so throughout this time, they're seeing each other. And then in 1898 in May, they married each other. And they got married in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is an important part of the story, because as I mentioned, it's a very important part of the story, because as I mentioned, Milton's mother was a very strict Mennonite and Catherine was Catholic.

And so that was a bit of a shock. She was 14 years younger than Milton Hershey at that point. And so he was 40-ish at that time. And about three years into their marriage, Kitty started to exhibit signs of an illness. It was sort of a progressive neurological illness. So she would have trouble walking. She had vision problems from time to time near the end of her life.

She had trouble holding things in her hand. So in 1915, she was visiting Atlantic City, and he was not with her at the time. She had a nurse with her, and they were driving home, and she insisted that they keep the top down.

It was a convertible car. And she started to feel ill. And so they stopped at a hotel in Philadelphia, and she ended up contracting pneumonia. And so they sent for Milton Hershey to come as soon as he could, and he did. And they did get to spend a little bit of time together before she passed, but she died before she could leave the hotel. So they were married from 1898 to 1915, which was a very brief, really part of his overall life. But she had a huge impact on a lot of decisions that he made after she passed away.

And he never remarried, and he always carried her picture with him after that. Hershey made the decision to completely get out of the caramel business. It was done with a lot of thought about the exciting prospects of chocolate for the masses.

However, when you think about it, two of the ingredients in caramels, milk and sugar, are also two of the ingredients in chocolate, milk and sugar, and they're basically 65% of both products. So a normal, non-risk-taking person would have never completely gotten out of an aligned candy product that could have cohabitated with the chocolate. But again, Mr. Hershey was incredibly, incredibly keen on his new chocolate venture. And so when he did that, people all around him were warning him about the risks and this and that. But again, he had already started to think about the other part of the business, which was he was going to be successful. He was going to build a town that was going to have streets named after cocoa bean growing regions.

He was thinking about all the possibilities of the new venture and was not thinking at all about the risk. And we've been hearing a heck of a story being told by Don Papson and Amy Ziegler. Both know more about Milton Hershey than almost anybody. And to be the first big mass marketer of chocolate in America and the world and create a brand, quite a vision.

And thank goodness this wasn't done in a group because the group would have talked him out of it. More of the remarkable story of Milton Hershey here on Our American Stories. With the Starbucks app, you can make a moment with a tap. So next time you order your morning coffee, treat someone else and make their day. To tell them you're grateful for them or that you've got their back or simply to say thanks, share the moment, download the Starbucks app.

What's up everybody? It's Xavier from the Trap Nurse Podcast. Intel is shaping the future of technology. And as they help people everywhere create wonderful, they like to invite you to the metaverse. Introducing Our Heartland on Roblox powered by Intel. Our Heartland and Intel designed a place where music and games come together, where you and your friends can experience events from your favorite artists and podcasters and become radio tycoons as you build your own music studio. How cool is that? And when you visit the Intel House of Wonder in Our Heartland, you'll find upgrades, items and emotes that will help take your experience to the next level. Like oceanfront views, a fountain filled with dolphins and an upside down waterfall. While you're out exploring Roblox, be on the lookout for an Intel bunny suit, inviting you into the House of Wonder in Our Heartland.

You'll know it when you see it. Do something wonderful today and check out Our Heartland on Roblox powered by Intel. Go to ourheartradio.com slash Roblox and start playing now.

That's ourheartradio.com slash Roblox. Doing household chores can be very time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming. And that was my last night.

And it's pretty much my every other night. If you want to get those larger laundry loads done and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack. So you can tackle any laundry load with confidence.

Now all I need is a bigger industrial size washer and dryer. All free clear mega packs are also 100 percent free of perfumes and dyes and gentle on skin, which is great for any family sensitive skin needs. So the next time that the whole family gets home from a long vacation or the kids get back from summer camp or whatever the situation that has you staring at a giant pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs have your back. They have mine between spit up Dawson learning how to eat and Jared working at a restaurant.

I see those loads all the time. Today, you can purchase all free clear mega packs at your local store today and conquer any laundry load. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Milton Hershey as told by Don Pabst the president and executive director at the MS Hershey Foundation and Amy Ziegler the senior director of the Hershey story museum. Let's pick up where we last left off. He also mentioned at the time that the million dollars that he had garnered at that point plus other accumulated savings which we never really talk about because we don't know how much it was we really only talk about the million dollars for the sale of the caramel company we forget that he felt as though he had accomplished a lot and so at some point around the turn of the century he mentions that he just accomplished so much and if it doesn't work out with chocolate it doesn't work out because he has already been successful but at the same time he was just a starry-eyed dreamer with this incredibly savvy business sense so I think that the thing we all marvel about those of us who have been around his legacy for so many years is that he had this balance that literally grounded him to do the right things and make great decisions despite the fact that the decisions were somewhat risky. When he was 21 years old and really struggling in business he wrote a quote in someone's autograph book that said something like one is only happy in proportion as he makes others happy and it went on from there and it really kind of encapsulates his philosophy moving throughout life and you know he made comments throughout his life saying you know when you make so much money all you can do is sit around and count it it's time for you to go do something basically to help other people and so in building a community and providing for all the things that he did he really was sharing everything that he was successful at and he earned with everyone around him he didn't want a company town where he was controlling people's rents while controlling their wages and making them sort of indebted to him for life he wanted to create a place where people could be happy and raise families and be successful and go on to do great things he encouraged other people to have businesses in his community he encouraged people to own their own homes it took a long time for his community to get built and he planned a lot of things early on so during the depression there was the great building campaign and during that time he built i'm not going to name everything but he built a high school for Milton Hershey school he built the hotel Hershey built a community building a sports arena a sports stadium and what he was able to do was employ more people than he could before so he people were losing hours in the factory but nobody actually lost a job in Hershey during the great depression and in fact he was able to hire a lot of people to help out with these building projects and there's a story that they were using a steam shovel during construction of the hotel Hershey and some foremen were bragging about how it did the work of 40 men and his response was to get rid of the steam shovel and hire 40 more men so he really was invested in making sure that people were taken care of Milton and Katie Hershey were never able to have children we assume it was because of her medical issues and they eventually in 1909 made a decision to establish the Hershey industrial school and the point was that they could take orphan boys and teach them a skill and a trade so that when they grew up they could be contributing members of society they focused on boys because they thought that girls were much easier to place with relatives because they were able to help around the house and could be helpful as children but boys really needed more guidance so that's what they did and any boy between the ages of four and I believe in the beginning it was eight who was an orphan could be admitted to the school and they would live there year round year round and basically become the responsibility of the school and so it grew and grew they eventually they made some changes to the deed of trust that was established when the school was established in 1909 over the years eventually orphan changed to having one parent and then you could have both parents in 1968 they started accepting boys of color and in 1977 they started to admit girls so there have been lots of times over the years that they've made decisions to open it up in order to serve more children my favorite Hershey story is that in 1918 Kitty Hershey had already passed away but Milton Hershey didn't die until 1945 but in 1918 in order to make sure that the school would live on and have something to fund it in perpetuity he took his holdings in the chocolate company at that time and put them into a trust for the school it said that they amounted to about 60 million dollars it's amazing that he did it that long before his death and it's amazing also that he didn't tell anybody that he did it so it happened and it was really kind of a secret for many years and then in the early 1920s someone got wind of it and they put an article into the New York Times and kind of announced that he had done this and as if that wasn't enough in the 1930s he took more wealth that he had accumulated and he put that into a trust for the MS Hershey Foundation which was established to provide cultural and educational opportunities in Derry Township so he gave his fortune away twice before he died today the Milton Hershey school is the largest pre-k through 12 overnight boarding school in the world when I joined the Hershey company in 1979 the then CEO of the Hershey company was a gentleman named Bill Dierden he was a graduate of the school and he always reminded the managers the managers of the Hershey company that remember in Hershey nothing else has to go on in perpetuity the Hershey chocolate company could be sold Hershey park could be sold everything is dispensable in Hershey PA but the Milton Hershey school will go on in perpetuity that's what we work for and that's what we're all about and so that has stayed with me to this day because he Mr. Dierden remembered so fondly that Mr. Hershey's interest in the school was his primary gift as he was about to basically enter into the twilight years of his life that is what he wanted to be remembered for and one of the greatest things about Mr. Hershey is when you think about it many of the products that he actually established in the early 20th century 1907 for kisses 1905 for what we'll call the mass-produced chocolate bar cocoa chocolate syrup Mr. Goodbar crackle all these things are still part of the Hershey portfolio and today the Hershey company is the United States's largest confectionary company with a rival of M&M Mars slash Wrigley but remember in 1905 Mr. Hershey had created a chocolate factory that was geared towards mass production there were many things that were done in that factory that were done nowhere else in the world as far as chocolate manufacturing was concerned however the demand for chocolate was so great that he had to expand the chocolate factory and by 1915 he had more than quadrupled the size of the factory in 1915 the chocolate company had sales of over 10 million dollars and again if you go to some monumental dates by 1925 36 million dollars worth of chocolate 1945 71 million dollars worth of chocolate and then basically you get to some really large numbers in the 70s over a half a billion dollars worth of chocolate in 1975 and in 2005 4 billion dollars worth of chocolate and today that number is 9 billion dollars worth of confectionary products worth of confectionary products and a great job on the storytelling and production by Greg Hengler as always and a special thanks to Don Papson the president and executive director at the MS Hershey Foundation and Amy Ziegler the senior director of the Hershey Story Museum and what a story we just heard he starts with nothing and he builds something that's no easy thing to do and the only thing he cares about in perpetuity is not his candy factory it is not the brand he built what does he want kept that MS Hershey school that k-12 school for orphans the biggest of its kind in the world and that is the heart of your typical American entrepreneur it's not about the money it's always about something bigger he built a town for goodness sake and loved his people and his people loved him back and by the way what a story about entrepreneurship in the end the risk-taking more risk-taking it was a double down and then a double down and then a double down again and again why well why not hard to understand these people in the end until after the fact again nine billion dollars in sales the largest confectionary company in the country bigger than its rival Mars which itself is a heck of an American story the story of Milton Hershey here on Our American Stories with cheapcaribbean.com you can get more food more drinks and more fun for less money on your all-inclusive beach vacation like bottomless margaritas yes and going snorkeling whenever i want yes and moonlight dance parties yes and loaded fajita nachos yes and all the daiquiris i can drink you can say 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