The Untold Truth Of Hershey

There's probably no one in America who hasn't had a Hershey product of one kind or another. They're such a staple it's impossible to think of a kitchen (or checkout line) without them. Hershey was founded by Milton Hershey at the turn of the century, and he wasn't always the successful philanthropist we think of today.

The story of Hershey is one that embodies what we think of when we talk about the American dream: overcoming adversity, working hard, building a life and a legacy. The man — and the company — has a fascinating story that involves failed business ventures and bankruptcy, a European inspiration, and even a near-death experience. Today, Hershey is synonymous with chocolate, but it wasn't an easy road by any stretch of the imagination — and it didn't start with chocolate. Along the way, he changed the nation's sweet tooth, built a city, and built lives for thousands of employees and children given a chance by his charitable organizations. Let's talk chocolate.

When Hershey sold his caramel business for a turn-of-the-century fortune, he was only letting part of his candy empire go. In 1893, Hershey had gone to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and attended a demonstration of a German chocolatier. The demo included machinery that made the entire chocolate-making process easier, and Hershey saw an opportunity.

Until then, chocolate was time-consuming to make and expensive to buy — more of a luxury item. Official Hershey history says that changed with Hershey's purchase. He had the machines shipped back to his caramel plant with the intention of making chocolate-covered caramels, but the chocolate was such a hit that his business became all about the milk chocolate. He rethought his business plan, started making "Hershey bars," and changed candy history by making affordable chocolate available to everyone.

There's a strange footnote to Hershey's trip to the 1893 Exposition, as he wasn't the only one inspired by the estimated 27 million people there. The James Beard Foundation says it also launched Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit, Aunt Jemima, and Cream of Wheat, and it's where Pabst won their Blue Ribbon.

Rags-to-riches stories might seem like they're a dime a dozen, but Hershey's story was shaped by incredible hardship. Born Milton Snavely Hershey on September 13, 1857, Hershey had one younger sister who died when she was 4. His father was prone to what Hershey History calls "get rich schemes", and all of those schemes — which included a trout farm — failed. Attempts to find that one last working scheme meant a lot of moving around, so young Hershey attended seven different schools before ultimately ending his formal education at the fourth grade.

Hershey then embarked on a series of failed ventures. He was dismissed from an apprenticeship as a printer, declared bankruptcy after opening his first candy company, and traveled across the country in a failed attempt to get in on a silver mine. He tried another candy business in New York City, and the doors closed on that one, too.

Hershey's family — who had invested in his failed businesses — largely shunned him. The exception was an aunt, who gave him a loan to buy his first caramel-making equipment. He spent days making candy, nights selling them from a pushcart, and found his calling.

Hershey's early struggles meant that he understood what it was like to wonder where your next meal was coming from, and when it came time to provide for his workers, he went to the extreme.

He started by designing and building Hershey, Pennsylvania as not just a company town, but as a place the workers in his factory would be proud to raise their families. The town's official history says it grew up in the earliest days of the chocolate factories, and included not only nice houses and affordable transportation, but a park, amusement park, ballroom, swimming pool, and much of the construction happened during the Great Depression. Hershey put as many builders to work as he could, building stadiums, arenas, theaters, and community centers as a part of what he called the Great Building Campaign.

The MS Hershey Foundation followed, and when Hershey and his wife, Catherine, realized they would never have children, they established the Hershey Industrial School for orphans. It's the Milton Hershey School today, and it's helped thousands of children.

The popular story is that the Kiss was named for the sound the machine makes as it drops each one on the conveyor belt, but Time says that's just an urban legend. The truth is actually a lot stranger.

Hershey only trademarked the name in 2000, and that's because it's actually a generic name for a piece of candy wrapped with a little twisty bit. The term dates back to at least the 1820s, and throughout the 19th century it was actually defined in dictionaries as simply referring to "A small piece of confectionary." Since it was such a generic term, Hershey wasn't allowed to trademark it — it would be like Papa John's trying to trademark the term "pizza." Candy historian Samira Kawash says that into the early 20th century, there were all kinds of kisses on the market. You could pick up some molasses kisses, violet or blue bell kisses, lucky kisses, or even honey corn kisses.

Fast forward decades, and it wasn't until 2000 that Hershey convinced the courts the "Kiss" had become so firmly associated with them it was a part of the brand, and they won their trademark.

For years, the Allied army was faced with not just training and arming men to send to Europe and the Pacific, they needed to feed them, too. That process started in 1937, when the army approached Hershey and asked them to design a heat-resistant, high-calorie, high-nutrition chocolate bar soldiers could carry through extreme temperatures as a source of portable, compact soldier-fuel. The Hershey Archives says it was Sam Hinkle who developed the bar to not only resist the heat of the Pacific theater, but contain some extra vitamins and nutrients that would help protect soldiers against tropical illness.

By 1939, Hershey was cranking out 100,000 Field Ration D bars a day, a number that skyrocketed to 24 million a week in 1945. Over the course of the war, Hershey supplied around 3 billion of the bars to soldiers worldwide, and it made such a difference in the war effort Hershey was given a military medal — and every employee also got recognized for their contributions. Later, that same chocolate bar would be used by another government agency: NASA. Hershey's Tropical Chocolate Bar made it to the moon, in the pockets of Apollo 15 astronauts.

Hershey's syrup is the stuff of chocolate milk and ice cream sundaes, but not all their chocolate syrup was made the same. Chemist Sam Hinkle was behind this product, too, and according to the Hershey Archives it took an insane amount of work for researchers to figure out how to turn chocolate into a stable, liquid product that could be canned and shipped across the country.

Once they had the basics, Hershey developed a single-strength and a double-strength product — and it was only available to their commercial customers. The double is what we're more familiar with, and it was first sold as an ice cream topping. The single was sold to places with soda fountains, and was used to make some chocolatey carbonated beverages.

By 1928, Hershey's salesmen were getting requests for a non-commercial version, and Hershey's obliged. There are a few other landmark dates in the history of Hershey's syrup: they started making their own metal cans in 1956, and replaced them with plastic bottles in 1979.

In 2015, The Daily Beast reported on a pretty shocking lawsuit that involved not just Hershey's, but Mars and Nestle as well. The suit claimed they weren't being honest about the fact their supply chain relied on the use of child labor to harvest the cocoa. West Africa was targeted as the location of the worst of the human rights violations, as that's where about two-thirds of the world's chocolate comes from. The suit claimed that anyone who purchased any of Big Chocolate's products was being duped into supporting slave labor, and that's a pretty serious accusation.

The issue first came to light in 2000, with a documentary that filmed the kids who were harvesting the cocoa, not being paid, and being beaten for trying to escape. Hershey — and their competitors — promised to join a global movement to end the use of child labor, after Hershey came out and said the documentary was the first they'd heard of what was going on. The issue is far from settled. In fact, Confectionary News reported on more lawsuits filed in February 2018, first against Nestle then against both Mars and Hershey's.