0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: We all know the classic American story about the evil capitalist, like Citizen Kane. 0:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He boys his way to the top, crushes his rivals, and loses all human decency along the way. 0:24 [SPEAKER_00]: This story is the opposite of that story. 0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the story of the Good Capitalist, Milton S. Hershey, of Hershey Candy Barfame, who looked out for his employees and founded two thriving company towns, one in Pennsylvania, and the other on the island of Cuba. 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He also founded a boarding school for orphans, but is still operating today. 0:53 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Milton Hershey School is currently the richest private school in America. 1:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It enrolls 2000 students, all of whom are either orphaned or from low income families. 1:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't cost them anything. 1:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything from enrollment to blocks and clothing and school supplies are gifts from the Hershey Trust. 1:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I was so inspired by the Hershey's story that I recently traveled to Hershey, Pennsylvania to learn more. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: We visited the Hershey factory and met with a senior director of the Hershey's Story Museum. 1:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So why don't you start by telling me who you are and your position here? 1:41 [SPEAKER_01]: My name is Amy Ziggler and I'm the senior director of the Hershey's Story Museum as well as Hershey Gardens and Hershey Community Archives. 1:49 [SPEAKER_00]: How long have you been here? 1:50 [SPEAKER_01]: 25 years. 1:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So you are very knowledge important. 1:55 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I know a little bit, yeah. 1:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, the best place to figure out who Mr. Hershey was is to start with his parents. 2:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So where did they come from before he was ever born? 2:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Right, well, his family is from Europe, Swiss menonites, came over. 2:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Both of his parents were born into menonite families. 2:17 [SPEAKER_01]: His mom was a pretty strict practicing menonite. 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: His father was not so much, but they grew up their whole lives in Lake Stork County, Pennsylvania. 2:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was born in the area that his family had come from. 2:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And... 2:30 [SPEAKER_01]: When they got married, his mom was always very hardworking, very family-oriented. 2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: His dad was really a big dreamer, he loved going to school, he loved reading, and so he was always trying... 2:47 [SPEAKER_01]: great new things where he was going to make a lot of money, they moved around a lot, he tried a lot of different jobs, he worked in oil fields, he ran a fish hatchery. 2:56 [SPEAKER_01]: In that respect, Milton Hershey had a pretty unsettled childhood because they never really stayed in one place for very long. 3:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was a big... 3:05 [SPEAKER_01]: point of contention with his parents. 3:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So he did have a younger sister, her name was Serena, and she was six years younger than him. 3:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So when she was four, she passed away, and Milton was 10, and that really was the beginning of the end for his parents living together. 3:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So they never divorced, 3:25 [SPEAKER_01]: But after Serena died, their relationship was not very good. 3:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Milton Hershey turned 14. 3:30 [SPEAKER_01]: His mom secured a an apprenticeship for him with a candy maker in Lancaster. 3:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he went there where he stayed for four years. 3:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was around that time that his father moved away and his parents never lived together again. 3:45 [SPEAKER_01]: But what's interesting, I think, is that Milton Hershey really got the best of each of them. 3:50 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was incredibly hardworking. 3:53 [SPEAKER_01]: very focused on his family when he eventually married. 3:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They had a very loving relationship. 3:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Really took care of his older family members his aunt and his both of his parents. 4:03 [SPEAKER_01]: But he also was a lot like his father in that he was really not afraid to take risks. 4:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He took a lot of big swings in his life and to the point where other people weren't kind of like, what are you doing? 4:14 [SPEAKER_01]: You're a little crazy here. 4:16 [SPEAKER_01]: But he really 4:17 [SPEAKER_01]: When people thought he would go one direction, always went the other way. 4:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And it worked for him. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think having sort of his mother's personality where he wouldn't give up and didn't just say, well, I'm not good at this. 4:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to completely give it up and go somewhere else. 4:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Like his father would have, he really stuck with it until he became good at it and really focused all of his energy on it. 4:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it could have gone a different way. 4:43 [SPEAKER_01]: But for him, it really worked out. 4:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What year was it that he was born? 4:47 [SPEAKER_01]: 1857. 4:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So a long time ago. 4:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And you mentioned that his mom secured him an apprenticeship. 4:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So whose idea was in why was it with? 5:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And did you say it was with candy maker? 5:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Candy maker. 5:03 [SPEAKER_01]: His mother was very interested in making sure that he learned how to do something, some kind of trade, so that he could grow up and be successful and be able to hold a job, which is something that his father never was 5:14 [SPEAKER_01]: very good at, and I think his father actually got him in a apprenticeship with a printer that did not go very well, and the story is that Milton Hershey kind of went on purpose, dropped his hat into a printing press. 5:26 [SPEAKER_01]: The guy was not very nice, and so he got fired right away. 5:30 [SPEAKER_01]: So his mother took over and I think wanted to find something that he might enjoy a little bit more. 5:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So he went to work because the name was Joseph Reuer and he was a confectioner and she actually paid a little extra so that he would be able to help make candy not just like work at the front of the shop. 5:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's where he learned how to really make candy and he really took to it and enjoyed it and was something that he wanted to make a career out of. 5:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was a apprentice for four years and then he moved to Philadelphia in 1876. 6:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where the Centennial was happening at that time. 6:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So there were a lot of people visiting Philadelphia. 6:07 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a world's fair and it was taking place in Fairmount Park. 6:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And so his first shop was in Fairmount Park. 6:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was really right in the thick of it. 6:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, he had some help from his mother and his aunt Maddie. 6:19 [SPEAKER_01]: His mother's sister, they came to Philadelphia and stayed with him. 6:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And they helped to make candy. 6:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was basically making candy at night and then outselling it during the day. 6:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a shop, but he would also take a little card out and try to sell it on the street. 6:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was really working hard. 6:37 [SPEAKER_01]: The fair ended. 6:38 [SPEAKER_01]: People left. 6:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He was always a very small business and he was becoming a little overwhelmed and it was becoming difficult to keep up with rent payments and ingredients and things like that. 6:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And his father came to visit and he also got him involved in some financial things that were not helpful. 6:57 [SPEAKER_01]: He developed a display case. 6:58 [SPEAKER_01]: We actually have one on exhibit in the Museum upstairs. 7:02 [SPEAKER_01]: and it would display the candy in the flat drawer if you will that you would slide in the top and then you would just fill each compartment. 7:10 [SPEAKER_01]: So it always looked like it was full. 7:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Then behind those little compartments was a drawer that you could pull out and that's where the candy was. 7:18 [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to sell these to other candy stores and they could put Milton Hershey's candy in it and settled that way. 7:24 [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't really work out. 7:25 [SPEAKER_01]: His father wanted to move to Denver. 7:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So he said, 7:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be out of your hair, and so Milton Hershey did, and he really couldn't afford it. 7:35 [SPEAKER_01]: He had been borrowing a lot of money from his uncle, and so he ended up having to declare bankruptcy and left Philadelphia and then traveled around. 7:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He did go to Denver for a while and stayed with his father, and that's where he learned how to make carmels. 7:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And he learned how to make them with fresh milk, which is not something a lot of people were doing. 7:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They would use paraphine. 7:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And he worked with the guy in Denver that really taught him that fresh milk had a much better mouth feel at you or your texture and actually had a better shelf life. 8:06 [SPEAKER_01]: So he really focused on that. 8:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Then he went and traveled to New Orleans where he wanted to open a business. 8:12 [SPEAKER_01]: He did not because he realized he would have to ship all the equipment he needed from New York. 8:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he decided to just go to New York because he would save a lot of more money doing that. 8:22 [SPEAKER_01]: So he went to New York, he did open a business there and he had a lot of the same issues he had in Philadelphia. 8:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a small operation. 8:29 [SPEAKER_01]: His right would go up. 8:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He couldn't sell more candy. 8:32 [SPEAKER_01]: The same thing happened. 8:33 [SPEAKER_01]: He ended up having to declare bankruptcy and then he moved back to Lancaster where his mother was living. 8:39 [SPEAKER_01]: So how old was he at this port? 8:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 8:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So he gets to Lancaster and he really doesn't have any money again, but he really does want to be successful selling candy. 8:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he borrows some money from a friend and he starts what is now, what became the Lancaster Caramel Company. 9:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was fairly successful from the beginning. 9:05 [SPEAKER_01]: He did well and then eventually an importer from England came to visit 9:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Tasted some of his carmels and really loved them and placed a huge order for them to be shipped to England. 9:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So he went to the bank and was able to get money. 9:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He tried, he wanted to get a loan and at first they wouldn't give it to him and then eventually he convinced the loan officer that he would. 9:28 [SPEAKER_01]: be it was a good bet and so he, despite probably not being able to signed off on the look. 9:34 [SPEAKER_01]: That's how he got his money and was able to fill that order and then the exporter came back and said that was so great. 9:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I won't even more next time and then they were able to really expand after that and it was straight up after that. 9:45 [SPEAKER_01]: By 1894 he had over 1,300 employees which was pretty great eight years after he started. 9:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a sales office in Chicago and he also 9:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was doing very well. 10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: What was different the third time that he tried to do that compared to the first two? 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: I think he had a little more help. 10:06 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a friend who had also worked with him in Philadelphia for a little bit of time. 10:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think just the great luck of this man from England coming. 10:15 [SPEAKER_01]: It really was what was the moment that he was able to really expand. 10:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And do you know how he was able to hit that loan? 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: You have two bankruptcies, I can't imagine it. 10:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, me going to the bank and like, like, you know, loan? 10:29 [SPEAKER_01]: He was very convincing. 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He was welcome. 10:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had the order. 10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: He could prove that he was going to get paid for this order. 10:35 [SPEAKER_01]: For this order. 10:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was very good at relationships. 10:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And he did always pay people back. 10:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So he did, when things were outstanding, he always went back and tried to make it right. 10:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think he had a good reputation for that. 10:50 [SPEAKER_01]: and a good relationship with his banker. 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So did his dad try to get involved with his karma company? 10:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Not really. 10:56 [SPEAKER_01]: No. 10:57 [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't. 10:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And the wonderful thing is, even though his parents did not have a great relationship, he always had a good relationship with them, individually, and took care of both of them until they died, provided places for them to live. 11:10 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's a really great part of the story as well, that even though things weren't always so great with his home life when he was growing up, he still managed to maintain good relationships with them. 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Did his dad ever get a successful business off the ground? 11:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Not really. 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: No. 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: That's fair. 11:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Milton took care of him at the end. 11:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So he gets to this point where he's able to secure that loan. 11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Chromework company gets off the ground. 11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: What happens next with his story? 11:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, his carmel plant encompasses an entire city block. 11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is still in Philadelphia. 11:43 [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't like a stir. 11:44 [SPEAKER_01]: The like stir coma company. 11:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He becomes very wealthy. 11:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And I always say it's probably the most extravagant time of his life, but it wasn't really even all that extravagant. 11:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It was never a very extravagant person. 11:56 [SPEAKER_01]: During this time, he belonged to a coaching club, which meant they would ride their coaches around the street in Lancaster, sugarwin could see them. 12:03 [SPEAKER_01]: He had some, he belonged to an exclusive club. 12:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Started traveling a bit, went to Europe. 12:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And then during that time, he was on a sales call in James Town, New York. 12:13 [SPEAKER_01]: in 1897 with one of his best salespeople and he went into a candy store and he saw a young woman there that he introduced himself to and that turned out to be Kitty Sweeney. 12:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Katherine. 12:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He called her kitty and her friends called her kitty and they hit it off and they dated for about a year. 12:31 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have much information about that. 12:34 [SPEAKER_01]: They never really wrote letters to each other. 12:36 [SPEAKER_01]: He was big on sending telegrams. 12:39 [SPEAKER_01]: So not lots of the flowery poetry going back and forth, but she eventually during that time moved to New York City and got a job at Bealman's Department Store. 12:48 [SPEAKER_01]: She was working at a ribbon counter there. 12:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually he went to New York to visit at one point and they went to St. Patrick's Cathedral and got married in the 12:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He was not, we think that's why they got married in the rectorate. 13:02 [SPEAKER_01]: There were only two witnesses. 13:03 [SPEAKER_01]: It was not a big wedding, and we don't have any photos. 13:06 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't even know who the people were, that were witnesses. 13:09 [SPEAKER_01]: We think they just were working at the church or something or were friends of first from New York. 13:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So they got married in 1898, and they moved back to Lancaster. 13:18 [SPEAKER_01]: His mother, a strict man and I, you can imagine, was not thrilled at the idea of him marrying a Catholic woman. 13:24 [SPEAKER_01]: She really didn't know anything about. 13:26 [SPEAKER_01]: because he wasn't very out in the open with their relationship. 13:30 [SPEAKER_01]: None of his executives that he worked with really new. 13:32 [SPEAKER_01]: He was seeing anyone. 13:33 [SPEAKER_01]: So when he got married, it was pretty shocking. 13:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And she was 14 years younger than he was. 13:37 [SPEAKER_01]: No one really saw that coming. 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And his mother quickly, within a couple months, I think, moved out of the house that he bought her a different house because I think there was a little. 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: letting of heads going on during that time. 13:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, they had a decent relationship, and they traveled extensively. 13:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He and Kitty always wrote postcards and letters home to his mother, keeping up with what they were doing. 13:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So we know that they had a cordial relationship after that. 14:00 [SPEAKER_01]: But so that was a very big turning point in his life. 14:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And then in 1894, he went to the Colombian exposition, which was the world's fair that took place in Chicago. 14:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And he saw some chocolate making equipment there. 14:14 [SPEAKER_01]: that was from the J.M. 14:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Lamin Company from Germany. 14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And he bought two pieces of it that he had shipped home. 14:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And then when he got home, he bought two more pieces of equipment. 14:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when he really started to experiment with chocolate. 14:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Prior to that, most candies that were being sold in this country, if they had chocolate, were dark chocolate and it was just a coating. 14:36 [SPEAKER_01]: You weren't really able to buy a solid piece of chocolate like you can, like a Hershey's Bar, like you can get in that. 14:42 [SPEAKER_01]: So he started experimenting with chocolate, making all different kinds of novelties. 14:46 [SPEAKER_01]: So he would make these very elaborate round bars and the different sections made up the petals of a crescent-the-mom flower. 14:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they had these molds that were very elaborate, and they had very special packaging that was shaped like a flower. 15:01 [SPEAKER_01]: He had things called Zukas Sticks, which were sticks of chocolate. 15:06 [SPEAKER_01]: He had tennis cigarettes, supposed to look like chocolate cigarettes, I guess. 15:11 [SPEAKER_01]: There were candies that were packaged in what looked like a leather mail pouch, and then these little pouches were packed into a box shaped like a little box car. 15:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So they were very fancy and nothing branded about them. 15:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything looked completely different every package. 15:26 [SPEAKER_01]: So you would never look at one of these and say, oh, that's a Hershey product. 15:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So he did that for a while. 15:32 [SPEAKER_01]: 1894, he decided that chocolate was the future. 15:36 [SPEAKER_01]: He was always working towards focusing on just chocolate. 15:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So in 1900, he sold the Lancaster Caramel Company to the American Caramel Company, which was his biggest competitor for a million dollars and cash in stock. 15:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone thought he was crazy because he was one of the wealthiest people in Lancaster. 15:56 [SPEAKER_01]: When he sold it, I believe it was the biggest, 15:59 [SPEAKER_01]: business transaction that had happened in the city ever. 16:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He was doing very well. 16:04 [SPEAKER_01]: People were like, so you haven't perfected your recipe. 16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have a factory for chocolate. 16:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And you're just going to sell the coral company. 16:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And he did. 16:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So he had been buying up some farmland in what was... 16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: and still is today dairy township. 16:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's DE or Y, not dairy like cows. 16:23 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was buying up dairy like cows farms because he needed a lot of milk to make milk chocolate. 16:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So he looked at locations in New York and Baltimore in Philadelphia because they're all near ports and you have to get sugar and cocoa beans from other places. 16:36 [SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately he made the decision to come back to where he was born and to focus on making chocolate here. 16:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Because here he could control milk. 16:45 [SPEAKER_01]: You could really control very well Coco beans or sugar but here he could own milk plus in 1900 refrigerated railroad cars were not a thing so you had to be with in a certain distance of a dairy farm anyway in order to get milk to yourself. 17:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So he started building here. 17:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a huge amount of space so he could really expand and do whatever he wanted if he was in a city it would have been very limiting anywhere that he was 17:16 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question. 17:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Intuition, people really liked it. 17:19 [SPEAKER_01]: He really liked it, and it was something new. 17:21 [SPEAKER_01]: People were making chocolate in Europe, but it was very expensive, and he really wanted to change the way that it was produced so that he could make it for the masses so that everyone could enjoy it, not just. 17:34 [SPEAKER_01]: He really felt it was an untapped market. 17:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was becoming a lot more popular during that time. 17:39 [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at Coco being imports, they were really on the rise. 17:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And so people were interested in chocolate, but no one had cracked the code on how to make it affordable for everyone. 17:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what he really wanted to do. 17:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He experimented for a long time. 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He broke ground for his factory here in 1903. 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: What was this area called or what was here? 17:59 [SPEAKER_01]: This was dairy township. 18:00 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a church, dairy Presbyterian church, and there was a small group of people here, but it was all dairy farms. 18:06 [SPEAKER_01]: There was not, there was no town here. 18:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And there was nothing in, 18:11 [SPEAKER_01]: what is now where she Pennsylvania but farmland. 18:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So he really did everything that you see here. 18:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So we broke around for the factory in 1903 and then it opened in 1905. 18:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He still, all during that time, was leasing space in his old caramel factory where he was experimenting with chocolate and then eventually he built an experimentation sort of plant at what we call the homestead, which was the home that he was born in. 18:36 [SPEAKER_01]: It was sold out of the family and then he bought it back after he became successful in Lancaster. 18:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where he was living during the time the factor was being built. 18:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was also experimenting with chocolate in a building that he had built. 18:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And the factory opened in 1905 and he still hadn't perfected his recipe, but he was close. 18:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when he really stopped selling. 18:57 [SPEAKER_01]: He slimmed down his product line from 114 things to about 12 products that included 19:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Cocoa and baking chocolate, milk chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, and that's also when he started packaging things in the maroon and silver that you see now. 19:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And now anytime you open her she's product or a Reese's product, you know, based on the color scheme and the logo and the font and all of that what you're getting before you open it. 19:21 [SPEAKER_01]: That was really, he's very early branding in that way. 19:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's been interesting how he went from one extreme to the other. 19:29 [SPEAKER_01]: But he did. 19:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And by 1915, he had the biggest child with factory in the world. 19:34 [SPEAKER_00]: How many people did he have working in the factory when he built it? 19:37 [SPEAKER_01]: That is a very good question. 19:38 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the answer too. 19:39 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good question. 19:41 [SPEAKER_01]: But there were a lot. 19:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was always pretty equal men and women. 19:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of manufacturing jobs were done by men at that time. 19:51 [SPEAKER_01]: heavy lifting hot areas bringing in unloading cocoa beans from real cars and collecting dairy milk from all the dairies and things like that. 20:00 [SPEAKER_01]: That was all sort of work that men did. 20:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And then as Chacobars got to the finished part of the factory, women would remove them from molds, which was actually the hardest job in the factory according to many men and women who had to do it. 20:12 [SPEAKER_01]: But for many years it was just women and then they would do all the packaging and wrapping and things like that in colder areas of the 20:19 [SPEAKER_00]: because of my mind, you know, they're building a factory out here. 20:22 [SPEAKER_00]: There's clearly nowhere in a house these people. 20:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So they have to build them homes, by assume. 20:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so he did have a, there was a house called Hathner House that was actually used as a boarding house. 20:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Place, he also very early on was building houses in town for people to live in. 20:39 [SPEAKER_01]: So he really encouraged people to buy a house. 20:43 [SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't interested in renting. 20:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of other model industrial communities looked great on the outside, but for instance, Pullman outside of Chicago, you were not allowed to own your own home. 20:54 [SPEAKER_01]: You had to work for Pullman to live in that community, and you had to live in a building that he was renting to you. 20:59 [SPEAKER_01]: So he controlled your wages and your rent, which is never a good situation to be in. 21:03 [SPEAKER_01]: That Milton Hershey was much different. 21:04 [SPEAKER_01]: He really wanted this to be a place where people wanted to live that would really nurture families and make people happy and want to stay here all the time. 21:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So he did encourage home ownership, and they were very reasonably priced. 21:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He very early on built the Hershey Trust Company, which was sort of the community's bank, where you could get a mortgage. 21:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a lumber company that was in charge of building all the buildings in Hershey. 21:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So he really did plan every part of the community out before he started to build here. 21:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, it would have been built up a lot faster, but his wife passed away in 1915. 21:39 [SPEAKER_01]: World War I really put a halt to a lot of the construction that he wanted to do. 21:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of buildings were put off until the Great Depression started and he was able to employ a lot of people who weren't able to have jobs. 21:51 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's when he really did a great building campaign in Hershey. 21:54 [SPEAKER_01]: But very early on it was a post office and there was a men's club and then a women's club and the bank was here. 22:01 [SPEAKER_01]: There were things for there was a school he was very interested 22:05 [SPEAKER_01]: in providing for education. 22:08 [SPEAKER_01]: So he built what was called the McKinley School, and then he tore that down to build a much bigger school. 22:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he combined a lot of one room school houses in the area, so he was providing for education. 22:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So there was a lot going on, and then when the 1930s came, he built the community building. 22:24 [SPEAKER_01]: He started a museum, he built a stadium, a sports arena, the hotel Hershey, the junior senior high school from Milton Hershey School. 22:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was really, 22:32 [SPEAKER_01]: adding to the community, but there were lots and lots of houses here already. 22:37 [SPEAKER_00]: During the Great Depression, I assume that the cost of goods would be lower, maybe it would be easier to find people to work for you, but would people be buying less chocolate? 22:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, no, they weren't as successful as they were just before, but I think his candy was so inexpensive and that when you don't have a lot of money, sometimes the only thing you can do to make yourself feel better is to buy something like a little treat that's inexpensive. 23:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that people were able to do that with his candy bars. 23:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they really did not do badly during the Great Depression. 23:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have an idea of when he was starting his chocolate? 23:19 [SPEAKER_00]: How much one of his candy bars would compare in price to a more expensive candy bar? 23:24 [SPEAKER_01]: I do know that his candy bars were five cents when he started selling them, which was less. 23:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a number in my head for other candies, but his milk chocolate bars were five cents, and they remained five cents until the 1960s. 23:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So he started selling them in 1900, not the final version, but a form of milk chocolate bar. 23:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were five cents for all those years. 23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. 23:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1900, five cents was a reasonable price for a bar of chocolate. 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1960, it was a steel. 23:56 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1900, five cents was about $1.78 in today's dollars. 24:04 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1960, it was worth 51 cents. 24:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So when he gets over here, starts building the factory. 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I noticed from getting in town last night and looking, we were saying in hotel over here. 24:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And we were looking to see if it was a golf course around our hotel, but we on the map saw where he has a mansion behind our hotel with his mansion built at the time before he came here. 24:28 [SPEAKER_01]: No, he constructed that and they broke around in 1908 and I think they moved in 1909. 24:33 [SPEAKER_01]: So until that time he was living in the homestead, which is a few miles away from here, and then he built that house. 24:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And the interesting thing is it's a very modest house for someone of his means, number one. 24:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And number two, he built it. 24:46 [SPEAKER_01]: It's called High Point is the name of the house. 24:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And he built it on a hill looking down at the factory. 24:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And so lots of industrialists would have 24:55 [SPEAKER_01]: really right next to very loud railroad tracks and chocolate smells really amazing and it used to smell really good when the original plant was still an operation. 25:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's that but trains are dirty and they're loud and he was on the side of the plant with railroad tracks were so it's very interesting that he selected that space to build. 25:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And I also have to ask when we drove into town all the street lights are Hershey Kisses. 25:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Whose idea was that when were those installed? 25:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Those, they came around, I believe it's the fifties. 25:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a president of the chocolate company named Sam Hinkle. 25:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And because Hinkle was really involved in getting them done. 25:33 [SPEAKER_01]: They always called them Hinkle's twinkles. 25:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But they've been around for a really long time. 25:38 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's wrapped in unwrapped kisses, lining both sides of chocolate Avenue, all through downtown. 25:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And the wrapped ones, the plumes spin as well. 25:47 [SPEAKER_00]: When they first were building a town, is that when they came up with the name of the main street being talked right after? 25:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's really interesting because chocolate has always been and always will be an international product because cocoa beans only grow within 20 degrees north and south of the equator. 26:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So you can't grow them in the United States. 26:06 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a few in Hawaii, but definitely not enough for any kind of large scale production. 26:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And so Milton Hershey, when he laid out the town, named the Main Street's chocolate and cocoa avenues, but then all the residential streets are named after areas where cocoa beans come from. 26:21 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's streets called Bahia and Aureba and Caracas, and things like that. 26:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's fascinating that at that time he was really focused on bringing attention to the international part of his business. 26:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And something else I love is that a lot happens to cocoa beans once they get to the factory to process them. 26:40 [SPEAKER_01]: But anytime he was providing information about chocolate, he always went back to where they originally came from. 26:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So you could order as a teacher and education kit from the chocolate company. 26:53 [SPEAKER_01]: and it would contain cocoa beans, cocoa nibs, which are small parts of cocoa beans, chocolate liquor, which is ground up, cocoa bean, all the different things involved in making chocolate. 27:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And then there would be an educational booklet called the story of cocoa and chocolate, and it would talk about where they were grown, why they were grown there and show the people who were harvesting them, and all of that handling them before they came to this country. 27:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's really interesting. 27:18 [SPEAKER_01]: He was always very big on sharing the international, 27:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Part of what was going on. 27:24 [SPEAKER_00]: When was the town named Hershey? 27:26 [SPEAKER_01]: In 1906 I believe they were and to be clear the town is not named Hershey. 27:31 [SPEAKER_01]: It's still called dairy township but they built a post office and they had a contest to name the post office. 27:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And the winner, they had six hundred entries or something. 27:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And the winner was Hershey Coco, K.O. 27:45 [SPEAKER_01]: K.O. 27:45 [SPEAKER_01]: and the U.S. 27:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Postal Service said it was too long, just call it Hershey. 27:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So Hershey is the post office address, but it's not the actual legal name of the community. 27:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I didn't realize that. 27:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 27:56 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's still dairy township. 27:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm. 27:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The more you know. 28:00 [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. 28:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So after they build the factory, and after the great depression, he starts building it up more and more. 28:07 [SPEAKER_00]: At what point in time does it become more successful? 28:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And does he realize that his bet paid off? 28:15 [SPEAKER_01]: It was always pretty successful and the community was pretty thriving from day one. 28:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Today one, he started Hershey Park, kind of opened in 1906 and his point for that was really to provide a place for his employees to go to relax. 28:31 [SPEAKER_01]: and for families who were living here to go spend time, it had a playground, it had voting on Svetara Creek, there was a skating rink, a ban shell, so no rides, but lots of sort of places for people to go and have some fun. 28:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't just for people who lived here. 28:48 [SPEAKER_01]: He advertised in his newspaper and other newspapers come to her. 28:52 [SPEAKER_01]: She parked for the day, lots of Sunday schools would come here for the day. 28:56 [SPEAKER_01]: they had a trolley system and it would there was a car called the picnic car and there would be whole communities that would pack up lunches and wicker hampers and everybody that closed down all the businesses and everybody would hop on a trolley and come straight to Hershey Park and hang out for the day. 29:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Very interested in bringing people here and using Hershey and its beautiful community as a way to advertise this chocolate but also using 29:23 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a visitor's bureau at the chocolate factory, I think, starting in 1950, but very early and they would take people on tours of the plant and they could see how chocolate was being made and they would get free samples. 29:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was always very interested in bringing the outside world in. 29:39 [SPEAKER_00]: What was he like here? 29:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Very generous. 29:42 [SPEAKER_01]: very friendly i mean he was a he was a tough boss if he caught you doing something you weren't supposed to be doing at work he would fight you know you couldn't be smoking in the plan to there's stories where he would go in the plant and ask people to light his cigar because he always was smoking cigars and you had to say no because you're not allowed to smoke cigars in the plant if you said yes you would get in trouble you would do little things like that but then he would also 30:05 [SPEAKER_01]: He was in the hospital once, and while he was there, he heard a story about a young boy that was there who's family wasn't doing that well, and he tried to get them to send him to the Hershey Industrial School, which was the school that he founded, and they said no, but before he left the hospital, he made sure that he had a complete wardrobe of clothes that they always give to students at the school to go home with because his family was struggling financially. 30:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He would put money into the accounts of any children that were born at the Hershey Hospital that he started. 30:37 [SPEAKER_01]: He provided a museum for his community. 30:40 [SPEAKER_01]: He built a beautiful performance theater, which is part of a huge community building. 30:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He really provided a lot of amenities for people and supported them with his own money throughout his life. 30:50 [SPEAKER_01]: He also started Milton Hershey School, so he and his wife were unable to have children, and they really wanted to do something to help kids, so they started the school, which is basically a home for orphaned boys, and they could enter the school at age four, and stay completely free. 31:08 [SPEAKER_01]: They provide everything, and they still exist today. 31:10 [SPEAKER_01]: It was called Hershey Industrial School. 31:12 [SPEAKER_01]: and today it's called Milton Hershey School. 31:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So that was his biggest legacy. 31:16 [SPEAKER_01]: He actually nine years after it started, put all his holdings in the chocolate company, which were about $60 million into a trust for the school. 31:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So that it would go on in perpetuity. 31:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Today there are trust in the 20 some billions. 31:27 [SPEAKER_01]: They're doing okay. 31:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be around for a while. 31:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He also took years after that 1933, he took 500 shares of Hershey stock and put it into another trust to establish the MS Hershey Foundation, which provided and continues to provide educational and cultural opportunities within Dairy Township. 31:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So today that foundation operates this museum, Hershey Community Archives Hershey Gardens and the Hershey Theatre. 31:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He and his wife donated money to the building of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Harrisburg. 31:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They founded a science lab at Franklin and Marshall College. 32:01 [SPEAKER_01]: They donated a lot of money to hospital and some organizations in Lancaster. 32:06 [SPEAKER_01]: So they were very generous and people have really just amazing things to say about their encounters with him when he was alive. 32:14 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to ask the question that everybody in the world wants to know. 32:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. 32:19 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you become a chocolate tester? 32:27 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to describe it, but very well. 32:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I've heard they have actually have more taste buds in their mouth and they're much more sensitive to bitter sweet salty, mommy. 32:36 [SPEAKER_01]: You all of that stuff. 32:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, in order to be a chocolate taster, you have to start out being a super taster. 32:44 [SPEAKER_00]: wonder how you figure out if you're a super patient. 32:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry. 32:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But I will say when I was very young and would visit chocolate world a couple times, I was grabbed, not grabbed that sounds very much. 32:56 [SPEAKER_01]: It was acts along with like my siblings or my cousins who I were with to go taste chocolates in a room. 33:02 [SPEAKER_01]: They would just do have groups go in and taste new products. 33:05 [SPEAKER_01]: They were doing just the own general people liked them. 33:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was really fun. 33:09 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't do that anymore. 33:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But I do remember that happening a couple times. 33:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a favorite talk work? 33:15 [SPEAKER_01]: It changes. 33:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to say, I love take five's. 33:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I think not enough people love them. 33:22 [SPEAKER_01]: They're really good. 33:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And I love toffee, so Heath bars are my jam. 33:27 [SPEAKER_00]: What's your favorite part about working for Hershey? 33:29 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question. 33:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good story. 33:32 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, everybody loves a good scandal. 33:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've worked here for 25 years and they're really aren't any. 33:38 [SPEAKER_01]: He was just a great person and he did a lot of amazing things. 33:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So having the ability to tell people that story is really great. 33:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And I will share two of my best days at work to give you an idea of some of the things that I like. 33:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I really love 33:52 [SPEAKER_01]: talking with people who've grown up here, you know, and experienced Hershey other lives and they know things. 33:57 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know or they experience things. 33:58 [SPEAKER_01]: I've never experienced because I didn't start working here until 25 years ago. 34:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He also had a community in Cuba called Hershey Cuba and it came about because his wife died in 1915 at the end of the year and then in January he and his mother and her traveling companion were going to go to New Orleans to spend the winter. 34:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And when they got there, the weather was very bad, and they didn't really want to stay, and so they decided on a whim to visit Cuba. 34:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And when they got there, he really fell in love with the island. 34:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And immediately, his business brain started thinking, lots of sugar is produced in Cuba, and I could be in control of another part of what I need to make my product. 34:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he bought a lot of sugar cane fields. 34:42 [SPEAKER_01]: He built a sugar mill and they bought two other mills and then he built the first refinery on the island. 34:48 [SPEAKER_01]: He brought electricity to the northern part of the island where it didn't exist before. 34:52 [SPEAKER_01]: He built an entire community that really mirrored 34:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Hershey Penzelvania, so there was a botanical guard and a beautiful hotel and affordable worker housing with lots of amenities, and he paid people more than other people were paying. 35:04 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this was at a time where Cuba was really being taken advantage of and pillaged by lots of other business people. 35:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of other Americans, and so 35:13 [SPEAKER_01]: He made a huge difference on that island. 35:16 [SPEAKER_01]: He was always very concerned that their main economy was only built on sugar, so he tried to introduce cattle to the island, didn't really work out. 35:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, and also, the sugar season is just part of the year. 35:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were harvesting and processing sugar. 35:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had a job, and then for a few months, everybody would be unemployed. 35:35 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a very hard way to live. 35:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he built a Hennykin plant to make hemp rope. 35:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And he also built a peanut oil plant so that people during the off-season would have a place to work And they wouldn't leave his community and they could live there all year round. 35:48 [SPEAKER_01]: He did a lot of great things in Cuba And not long after we opened we have some information about it upstairs in our main exhibit gallery There was a man who came here with his family It was a weird situation. 35:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He had tried to call our administrative assistant wasn't in no one got the message that he was coming And so this guy just shows up from Cuba 36:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And he actually grew up who's born the year Milton Hershey died, which was 1945, and they sold their holdings in 46, but during his lifetime as a child, Castro still hadn't taken over, and things were still really going along the way they had been when Milton Hershey was there. 36:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So he got to experience all of those things that Milton Hershey built in Cuba, and he also got to experience all of them being taken away. 36:34 [SPEAKER_01]: just makes me teary because he was just such a great guy, but he came here after 15 years of not taking a vacation because he thought this was the only place where people would appreciate Milton Hershey as much as he did. 36:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that's what I love my job. 36:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And we got to take him to Milton Hershey's house and we got to take him to the theater and he was just, it was a really good day. 36:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And then another family came to New Year's later that knew them and he was sitting looking in a map and they were literally like, I lived here and he lived there and it opened us up to this whole group of people that we didn't know that we were able to do oral histories with. 37:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So it was a really, really great evening. 37:14 [SPEAKER_00]: This is, yeah. 37:15 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I love about working at the museum. 37:18 [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. 37:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we love people to visit the Hershey Store in Museum. 37:21 [SPEAKER_01]: We are open every day, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. 37:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And HersheyStory.org has all the information about visiting. 37:29 [SPEAKER_01]: We have wonderful museum exhibits. 37:32 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a chocolate lab where you can do a 45 minute hands-on class where you learn all about where Coco comes from, how it's processed into chocolate, and then you get to make something out of chocolate. 37:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And we also have a chocolate tasting from around the world where we serve six warm drinking chocolates. 37:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Five of them are from single countries of origin around the world and they have different levels of cacao in them. 37:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some milk chocolates and some dark chocolates. 37:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And the point of that is that you can taste the differences in chocolates because they taste 38:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Their flavor comes from, it's dependent on the amount of rainfall. 38:07 [SPEAKER_01]: There is temperatures, what grows near it in the rain forest. 38:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The type of being that it is and also how much of it is included in the actual chocolate that you're tasting. 38:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you can compare and contrast those and then we have a Hershey's milk chocolate that you can taste, which is a mix of beans from around the world. 38:25 [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of our conversation, I did ask the name of the little parchment paper strip 38:34 [SPEAKER_01]: It is a plume. 38:35 [SPEAKER_00]: A plume. 38:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I had always just called it the paper. 38:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to think Amy again for joining us. 38:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And you, for listening.
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