James Baquet

    We’ve been looking at the inventers and discoverers in the George and Ira Gershwin song, “They All Laughed.” After mentions of Columbus, Edison, the Wright brothers, and others of that caliber, we reach, “Hershey and his chocolate bar.”

    Wait: America, sound recording, flight, and — the chocolate bar? As it turns out, this was really quite an accomplishment.

    Milton Hershey (1857-1945) was born in the conservative Christian sect known as the Mennonites, and grew up speaking “Pennsylvania Dutch” (a form of German). His people had a reputation for being hardworking, and Milton was no exception. As a boy he worked hard on the family farm, and he left school after Grade 4 to become an apprentice to a printer. At 14 he made a mistake and got fired, and his aunt and mother found him a job with a confectioner. Just a few years later, around age 19, he moved to Philadelphia and started his own candy business.

    Traveling the country to learn various techniques, Hershey moved to New York in 1883. Back in Pennsylvania, he started the Lancaster Caramel Company. Within a few years he had two factories and over 1,300 workers. In 1900, he sold this company for a million dollars! Then he started the company that survives today, the Hershey Chocolate Company.

    He developed his own formula for milk chocolate, selling it in the form of chocolate bars and the famous Hershey’s Kisses. In those days, milk chocolate had been considered a luxury item. Hershey brought it to the common people.

    In 1912, Hershey and his wife had booked passage on the ill-fated Titanic, but business matters caused them to cancel at the last minute. Had he died, Hershey might never have gone on to supply over 3 billion specialized chocolate bars to the U.S. military during World War II before his death in 1945.

    Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town of around 15,000, has grown up around the Hershey plant. Its main streets include Chocolate and Cocoa Avenues, and its nicknames include “Chocolatetown, USA” and “The Sweetest Place on Earth.”

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. person who works for another in order to learn the trade

    2. something only the rich can afford

    3. religious group

    4. recipe, way of making a food or other mixture

    5. quality, level of excellence

    6. brown, chewy candy made by heating sugar

    7. traditional

    8. made for a special purpose

    9. candy maker

    10. doomed, destined for an unfortunate end