Quest for a New Chocolate Bar

The Hershey Chocolate Company - An Industrial Paradise

The Hershey Chocolate Company was founded with an unusual corporate mission. Its founder, Milton S. Hershey, and Chief Executive Officer from 1894 until shorlty before his death in 1945, was an extraordinary individual who did not share the dreams of grandeur that most entrepreneurs of his time had. His dreams were of utopia, of an industrial paradise. He envisioned a corporation that not only would provide fair compensation for employment and humane working conditions, but one that would also attend to almost every need the employees would have. Years before founding the Hershey Chocolate Company, he shared his vision with family and friends. Many of them were skeptical.

The Lancaster Caramel Company, founded in 1886 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the first successful venture started by Mr. Hershey. This early success was in great measure due to the wisdom he had acquired after having failed in two other confectionery businesses he founded in Philadelphia and New York City in the previous four years. The caramel company had grown beyond his expectations and thus had brought him wealth and notoriety as a fair employer.

Mr. Hershey was a man open to new ideas, many of which came during the many months each year he and his wife spent travelling around the world. During his trips to Europe and accross the United States, he always paid visits to equipment manufacturers, wholesalers and any companies with innovative products. This is how he first came across chocolate making machinery in 1893.

While his caramel company was at the height of its success, he realized that caramels were going to be a passing fad in the United States and chocolate products were going to be the dominant players in the confectionary business. He started a small chocolate operation in 1894, which he called the Hershey Chocolate Company, next to his caramel plant. Mr. Hershey began producing baking chocolate, cocoa and sweet chocolate coatings for caramels. Once again, Mr. Hershey's intuition was proving him right, and the emerging company experienced steady growth year after year.

Mr. Hershey was a creative entrepreneur with a keen sense of social responsibility and a deep commitment to humanity and to his ideals. His dream of an industrial paradise had matured over the years. Despite much hesitation from his closest associates, he pressed on and decided that the time had come to make his dream come true.

In a risky move, he sold the caramel company in 1900 and made plans to move the chocolate operations from Lancaster to a new location where he could start the development of his industrial paradise. In 1905, the factory and operations were finally moved to the recently incorporated town of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The company enjoyed growth and unrivaled success as it continued to produce a variety of chocolate products. Not only was the Hershey Chocolate Company the first candy manufacturer to market its products nation-wide, but it also shaped the chocolate taste preferences of Americans for generations to come. The maroon and silver Hershey chocolate bar quickly became and American icon.

The chocolate town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, went through an extraordinary period of construction and growth in the first part of the 20th century fueled by the success of the Hershey Chocolate Company. Mr. Hershey, true to his dream, oversaw the construction of affordable employee housing, schools, churches, a community center, a theater, an amusement park, a zoo, a telephone system, railroad stations, roads, stores, and many other amenities for his workers and the surrounding communities.

Mr. Hershey's most important contribution was the creation of the Hershey Industrial School (renamed the Milton Hershey School in 1951). This school was exclusively dedicated to the caring and educational development of orphans. Milton S. Hershey and his wife Catherine were not able to have children. Mr. Hershey's desire to share his success with disadvantaged children led them to donate their entire estate to the school a few years before his death. Today, the school continues to be the majority shareholder of the company.

While in many parts of the country industrial giants were rising with corporate priorities that almost invariably did not include the welfare of the workforce, the chocolate town of Hershey became an unusual scene in corporate America. The company that introduced America to the milk chocolate bar was gaining much recognition for its ideals of social progress and prosperity for all. Despite the labor unrest that other corporations experienced during this period of unprecedented national economic expansion, the Hershey town saw only sporadic strikes by some workers.

Under the watchful eye of Mr. Hershey – and his trusted top aides – the Hershey Chocolate Company experienced opportunity and growth. The legacy he left at his death– social responsibility, hard work and the sharing of wealth – are deeply ingrained in the corporate philosophy of the company.