Catherine Koonar
Access provided at 29 Mar 2019 19:42 GMT from Reading University (+1 other institution account)
Making Chocolate American:
Labor, Tourism, and American Empire
in the Hershey Company, 1903–85
Abstract: Over the course of the twentieth century, Hershey became
synonymous with chocolate in America. Americans saw the company’s
founder, Milton Hershey, as a great industrial philanthropist, and the town
flourished as a tourist attraction. This article shows how Hershey chocolate
became American, traces the history of the town as a destination, and
explores the way Hershey’s industrial and imperial past has been obfuscated
in favor of a narrative grounded in the brand’s place in American culture
and Mr. Hershey’s personal legacy. Commitment to welfare capitalism, the
desire for Americans to visit the town and the factory, and the Hershey
Company’s intentionally folksy self-promotion worked to establish the
brand as part of American popular culture.
O
ver the course of the twentieth century, Hershey became the
most recognizable chocolate in America. It occupies a significant
place in American holidays and celebrations, and no summer
campfire would be complete without s’mores made with squares of
Hershey’s chocolate. In addition to the cultural ubiquity of Hershey’s
chocolate products, the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, is a popular desti-
nation for vacationing American families and a point of interest for choc-
olate lovers the world over.
This article shows how Hershey chocolate became American, traces the
history of the town as a destination, and explores the way Hershey’s indus-
trial and imperial past has been obfuscated in favor of a narrative grounded
in the brand’s place in American popular culture and Milton Hershey’s
personal legacy. Two of the main ingredients in milk chocolate—cocoa and
sugar—are largely sourced from tropical countries, but Hershey’s choco-
late has never been seen as exotic. Through the promotion of Hershey as
a “traditional,” picturesque American town as well as a strong emphasis
While Hershey’s trajectory is unique, other company towns have become tourist destinations in
1
the postindustrial age. For example, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Bethlehem Steel operated for
much of the twentieth century, relies on the Sands Casino Resort as well as various seasonal events
to draw visitors; former textile town Lowell, Massachusetts, uses heritage tourism to lure American
tourists; and Kohler, Wisconsin, home of the Kohler Company, uses golf and other outdoor activ-
ities to attract tourists. See Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of
American Company Towns (London, 1995); Chloe E. Taft, From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the
Postindustrial City (Cambridge, MA, 2016); “The Christmas City,” Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of
Commerce, accessed Oct. 11, 2017, http://www.bethlehempa.org/visit_christmas.html; “Destination
Kohler,” The American Club Resort, accessed Oct. 11, 2017, http://www.americanclubresort.com/;
Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American
Economy (New York, 2010).
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 341
over one hundred lots for future sale to employees. Hershey was a planned
company town; as such, there were restrictions on the types of homes peo-
ple were allowed to build. For example, houses were required to have two
stories and pitched roofs, fences required company approval, and residents
were prohibited from running private businesses out of their homes.5
Home ownership was encouraged in Hershey; the company tried to build
a peaceful and orderly community in which self-sufficiency, independence,
and community involvement were emphasized. Ultimately, though, the
town was governed and shaped by the watchful eye of its founder. Company
towns were representative of the goals and ambitions of their industrialist
founders, who were often also interested in social reform. These giants
of turn-of-the-century industry strived to increase productivity, transform
working-class culture, and decrease social conflict through the implemen-
tation of social guidelines that often extended beyond the workplace.6
Hershey was part of the “new company town” movement, which was
heavily influenced by the social ideas of the Progressive Era. These towns
featured more social programs, green space, and company support for
employee home ownership than did their predecessors, but they were still
controlled by management. Most residents did not object to Mr. Hershey’s
brand of paternalism, but the fact that Hershey was a “one-man town” was
not lost on its citizens. One resident, Harold Hamilton, referred to town
housing rules as the “Milton Hershey Codes.”7 It was Mr. Hershey’s town,
and this fact was never far from the minds of residents. Nevertheless, most
residents remembered Hershey as a safe and pleasant place to live—and
this is the way it was advertised.8
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the impression
of the town as charming and picturesque helped to establish Hershey’s
5
Michael D’Antonio, Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian
Dreams (New York, 2006), 116–17; James DeSantis Oral History Interview, 1982, 89OH63, Hershey
Community Archives, Hershey, PA.
6
See, for example, Oliver J. Dinius and Angela Vergara, eds., Company Towns in the Americas:
Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities (Athens, GA, 2011), 1; Stephen Meyer III, The
Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (Albany,
NY, 1981); Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise; John S. Garner, ed., The Company Town:
Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age (New York, 1992).
7
Harold H. Hamilton Oral History Interview, Oct. 19, 1992, 92OH38, Hershey Community
Archives; J. DeSantis OHI.
8
See, for example, Henry Stump Oral History Interview, Mar. 11, 1992, 92OH10, Hershey
Community Archives; Edward C. Tancredi Oral History Interview, Nov. 8, 1991, 91OH27, Hershey
Community Archives; and Jean M. Raneiro Oral History Interview, Oct. 12, 1992, 92OH37, Hershey
Community Archives.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 343
9
E. Tancredi OHI.
10
Betty Blachly Oral History Interview, 2006, 2006OH07, Hershey Community Archives; John
A. O’Brien, Semisweet: An Orphan’s Journey Through the School the Hersheys Built (Lanham, MD, 2014).
11
Lawrence E. Davies, “An Orphan School-Home,” New York Times, Nov. 4, 1934.
12
Kenneth Hatt Oral History Interview, Oct. 27, 1989, 89OH17, Hershey Community Archives.
13
“Harrisburg Chamber of Commerce Dinner to Honor M. S. Hershey,” Feb. 17, 1936, 97004,
box 7, folder 9, Hershey Community Archives.
344 CATHERINE KOONAR October
Hershey “made sure that everything people needed was always there.”14
Following the death of his wife in 1915, the heirless Mr. Hershey began
the process of transferring his entire personal fortune, thousands of acres of
productive farmland, and control of his chocolate company to the Hershey
Industrial School.15 Since 1919, this fortune has been controlled and
administered by the Hershey Trust Company, whose duty it is to ensure
that Hershey School students are taken care of, that all school programs
are funded, and that future expansion plans remain possible. Observers
praised Mr. Hershey for endowing the school with his personal fortune
and giving the Hershey Trust control of the company. The national media
described him as something of a hero for (or a savior of ) America’s poor
children. This coverage brought increased national attention to both the
town itself and the man who built it.16 The school has become an enduring
symbol of its founder’s idealism, his commitment to charity, and his desire
to provide for “his boys.” When he died in 1945, he left this legacy. The
connection between the company, the town, and the school is part of what
has made the Hershey Company, its history, its citizens, and its place in
American culture special to those who lived, worked, and vacationed in the
region. It is also part of what shielded the company from criticism with
regard to labor relations and imperial aspirations.
From its inception, the Hershey Company benefited from steady
national population growth and an increase in the popularity of mass-
produced food products, which provided an important market for choco-
late products. In the early twentieth century, brands including Campbell’s
and Heinz gained strength based on advertising and promotion.17
Hershey, however, entrenched itself in American culture through the early
twentieth-century solidification of the town as a popular tourist destina-
tion and the reputation of Mr. Hershey as kind, generous, and compas-
sionate. Both the act of eating and the experiences of travel and leisure
connected Americans to Hershey—the town, the man, and the company.
Kathleen Cassady Oral History Interview, 1991, 91OH25, Hershey Community Archives.
14
“M. S. Hershey Gives $60,000,000 Trust for an Orphanage,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 1923.
15
16
See, for example, James C. Young, “Hershey, Unique Philanthropist: His Magnificent Gift to
Orphan Boys a Long Cherished Idea,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 1923; “Hershey Is Modest about Great
Gift,” New York Times, Nov. 10, 1923; “M. S. Hershey Gives $60,000,000 Trust for an Orphanage”;
and “$60,000,000 Gift for Orphanage,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 9, 1923.
17
See Katherine J. Parkin, Food Is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America
(Philadelphia, 2006); Nancy F. Koehn, “Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late Nineteenth
Century,” Business History Review 73 (1999): 349–93; and Gabriella M. Petrick, “‘Purity as Life’: H.
J. Heinz, Religious Sentiment, and the Beginning of the Industrial Diet,” History and Technology 27
(2011): 37–64.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 345
made. The pamphlet describes how milk, cocoa beans, and sugar made
their way to the Pennsylvania factory and how they were combined to
produce Hershey’s sweet milk chocolate.21 “The Story of Chocolate and
Cocoa” states that “the world owes its first knowledge of chocolate” to
Columbus and Cortés, who, based on the commercial importance of cacao
and its role as a status symbol in Central America, introduced the prod-
uct to Spain, from which it spread to the rest of Europe and the wider
Western world.22 The publication ignores indigenous knowledge and
control of cacao cultivation and trade in favor of a narrative that empha-
sizes European knowledge (later appropriated by Milton Hershey) and
contrasts “primitive” and “modern” methods of harvesting, drying, and
processing cacao beans.23 Hershey proudly claimed that it had “possessed
itself of an intimate knowledge of the cacao bean crops in every country
and deals with their importation to the factory with the same attention to
quality and purity that characterizes its Pennsylvania milk production.”24
In its discussion of sugar production, the pamphlet also stressed Mr.
Hershey’s self-described discerning eye for quality. Beginning in 1917,
Hershey’s sugar supply was sourced from the company’s own plantations
in Cuba. The company deemphasized the tropical nature of cane sugar and
instead highlighted the beauty of Hershey’s Cuban town and the modern
technology used to process its sugar. This focus served to obscure sugar’s
“exotic” nature and to erase the image of the nonwhite labor used to pro-
duce it.25 Many Americans believed that cane sugar was incompatible with
the constitution of white Americans; thus, the more distance that could be
put between Hershey’s chocolate and tropical sugar, the better.26 Hershey’s
sugar was further naturalized through the company’s insistence that the
21
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa: With a Brief Description of Hershey, ‘the Chocolate
and Cocoa Town’ and Hershey, ‘the Sugar Town,’” 1926, Collection 89.451, Published Collections
Department, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE. Visitors received this booklet at the end
of Hershey factory tours to answer any questions about the sourcing of raw materials.
22
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” 11. The terms cacao or cocoa bean both refer to the raw
material used to make chocolate and cocoa. The beans undergo a process of fermentation, deshell-
ing, roasting, grinding, and pressing before they are ultimately turned into chocolate and cocoa and
consumed.
23
For a history of cacao in the Americas and Europe, see Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane
Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, NY, 2008).
24
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” 19.
25
April Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2015).
26
In the early twentieth century, American anxiety around race, class, and diet were connected.
The discourse around food and race suggested different races were suited for different foods. Many
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 347
quality of its product was monitored as carefully as that of the milk that
was delivered to the Pennsylvania factory each day.
The Hershey Company used both the perceived purity of milk and the
supposed superiority of American knowledge and technology to obscure
the tropical origins of its products and establish them instead as unques-
tionably American. In the early twentieth century, Progressives touted milk
as an important source of protein, fat, minerals, and calories. Though milk,
they argued, was a naturally balanced food, the industrialization of food
production further enhanced its nutritional value.27 Further, as Melanie
Dupuis has shown, beginning in the 1880s advertisements represented
milk as necessary for “good mothering,” and, over time, women came to
consider milk and milk products as necessary to the health of their chil-
dren.28 When cocoa beans arrived at the Hershey factory, the company’s
pamphlet boasted, they were met with a “battery of modern machinery”
and “creamy milk” from “grass-fed” Holstein cows raised in “Hershey-
inspected herds.”29 This process transformed the beans into Hershey’s
milk chocolate and cocoa.30 The sugar, which arrived in Pennsylvania from
Hershey plantations in Cuba, was “ground to an almost impalpable snow-
white powder” and combined with fresh milk.31 The description of the milk
as wholesome and pure and the use of the term “snow white” to refer to
the sugar represented an attempt to Americanize chocolate and cocoa and
to assuage the anxiety of white Americans who worried about consuming
foods that were viewed as only being suitable for nonwhite peoples. The
fact that sugar was further refined in Pennsylvania added additional dis-
Americans believed that beet sugar was more appropriate for European and North American con-
sumption than tropical cane sugar and that heavily refined sugar was more digestible for white bodies.
The Hershey Company imported sugar from its Cuban plantations, so it emphasized the fact that the
company owned and operated the Cuban enterprises, and it highlighted the sophistication of its refin-
ing process as a way of showing Americans that Hershey products were healthy, delicious, and suitable
for consumption. These ideas subsided later in the 1920s as more scientific knowledge about food
entered the mainstream. For more on race, class, labor, and diet, see Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal
Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, MA, 2002); Helen
Zoe Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the
Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013); and Merleaux.
27
E. Melanie DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink (New York, 2002);
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa.”
28
Dupuis, 104.
29
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa.” While the Holstein is a European breed of cattle,
Americans were familiar with it and certainly would not have viewed it as foreign or exotic.
30
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” 19.
31
“The Story of Chocolate and Cocoa,” 21.
348 CATHERINE KOONAR October
tance between the tropics and the consumption of the finished product. In
this description of the process of making Hershey’s chocolate and cocoa,
locally produced milk was arguably the most important part. When mixed
with natural, pure, and native milk, cacao and sugar combined to create
something familiar and wholesome. Thus, the consumption of Hershey’s
chocolate was constructed not as a culinary adventure or as an act of tour-
ing the tropics through “exotic” ingredients and flavors. It was an innately
American experience created using American knowledge, ingenuity, and,
most importantly, fresh milk from cows that were raised in Hershey’s own
Pennsylvania pastures.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States
gradually increased its control and influence in the Caribbean. Following
the Spanish-American War, American power became more overt. For
over three decades, the United States used the Platt Amendment to
establish and expand political and economic hegemony in Cuba. Driving
out European influence by replacing this overseas capital with American
investment was crucial. Between 1902 and 1924, both American sugar
companies and food companies for which sugar was important purchased
and leased Cuban land and sugar mills.32 By the mid-1920s, American
sugar interests and such companies as Hershey had supplanted much of
the Cuban mill-owning class, proletarianized large segments of the rural
agricultural population, and imported tens of thousands of West Indian
workers during labor shortages.33 The Platt Amendment maintained
political stability and granted the United States the right to intervene in
Cuban affairs, and it allowed the United States to step in if the capital
investment of American companies was ever in jeopardy as a result of
political instability or leadership changes. The protection offered by the
Platt Amendment and the Reciprocity Treaty created the atmosphere that
allowed the Hershey Company to profit from the production and exporta-
tion of Cuban sugar for three decades.
By the early twentieth century, sugar was a modern necessity in the
United States and, of course, a primary ingredient in milk chocolate. Thus,
the establishment of Hershey sugar plantations in Cuba grew out of an
essential need. By 1916, the First World War had affected the production
32
Jules Robert Benjamin, The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development,
1880–1934 (Pittsburgh, 1977), 15–19.
33
Thomas R. Winpenny, “Milton S. Hershey Ventures into Cuban Sugar,” Pennsylvania History
62 (1995): 491–502.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 349
and exportation of European beet sugar, and Hershey looked for a consis-
tent and inexpensive source. Securing a reliable sugar supply was the pri-
mary objective, but Hershey’s experience in Cuba also expressed the com-
pany’s paternalistic and imperialist vision. Greg Grandin has argued that
Ford’s Brazilian rubber town was born out of a desire to salvage a vision
of America that was slipping away at home.34 There is little evidence to
suggest that Mr. Hershey was similarly disillusioned by American culture
and politics; he appears to have been motivated by the promise of cheap
Cuban land and access to American markets. However, the same hubris
that caused Ford to believe that he could recreate some lost American
ideal in the Amazon spurred Milton Hershey to build a carbon copy of his
Pennsylvania town in Cuba.
Ideas about race, empire, and labor were central to the way that the
Hershey Company approached its business in Cuba. In 1916, when Mr.
Hershey first went to Cuba, there were only a handful of American-owned
sugar mills in the Santa Cruz region. The Hershey Company acquired
thousands of acres of land and established mills at Rosario, San Antonio,
and Central Hershey, which became its most important Cuban holding.
The company began by importing laborers from Louisiana, but, shortly
after it established plantations and mills, the Cuban government passed a
law that required Hershey to hire more Cuban workers.35 The company’s
initial strategy of importing American workers to Cuba was an attempt to
avoid using Caribbean laborers in the production of sugar. Hershey sought
to minimize its tropical associations by using American labor to plant,
harvest, and process the sugarcane. In addition, some American lawmak-
ers from sugar-producing states were concerned about the importation of
Caribbean sugar and the effect it may have had on American farms and
farm workers.36 Hershey Cuba employee J. J. Woolf recalled that following
this legislation, “every time you fired an American [or they left the job] you
had to hire a Cuban.”37 Woolf attributed Mr. Hershey’s success in Cuba to
the fact that he “made friends” with his workers, but Mr. Hershey main-
tained a paternalistic attitude toward his Cuban employees. According to
34
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (New York,
2009).
35
Wallace Interview with J. J. Woolf, 1957, box 9, folder 32, Wallace Research Collection, Hershey
Community Archives.
36
Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization. Of course, this concern ignored the fact that many of those
who worked on US sugar beet farms were migrant laborers from Mexico.
37
Wallace Interview with J. J. Woolf.
350 CATHERINE KOONAR October
Woolf, “you can get out of a Cuban the most loyal service in the world if
you treat him as an equal, but never let him be above you in any way, that
is, never let him get the best of you.”38 “If you know how to handle them,”
Woolf continued, “they will go to any end for you. But if you don’t, it is
like trying to drive a Georgia mule.”39 The imperialist, civilizing mission
and American notions of racial and cultural superiority were central to
the management of Hershey’s Cuban enterprise. The company’s ultimate
goal in Cuba was to secure cheap raw materials using the labor of a largely
powerless workforce.
As part of the company’s effort to create a loyal and obedient Cuban
labor force, it tried to replicate features of the Pennsylvania town. For exam-
ple, Mr. Hershey established a school in Hershey Cuba that also served
orphan children. The school was primarily interested in industrial educa-
tion; students were taught to raise sugarcane and operate the machinery in
Hershey mills.40 Boys were admitted to the school, where they were trained
for agricultural jobs, when they were between ten and twelve years old.
The first students at Hershey’s school in Rosario were about fifty boys who
had been made orphans following a railroad accident.41 Antonio Espinosa,
whose father was a teacher at the school, recalled that Mr. Hershey visited
every time he came to Cuba and that he was “very fond of [the school].”42
Ultimately, the Cuban school was unsuccessful. John G. Snavely, a
Hershey executive, noted that “if [Mr. Hershey] had got any cooperation
from the Cuban people, he would have given them the same school he
had [in Pennsylvania].”43 Politicians and corporate interests in the United
States believed that American institutions could be easily transplanted and
accepted in the Caribbean and that, if they failed, it was because the local
population did not embrace them wholeheartedly. Snavely implied that
education was not important to Cubans—that Mr. Hershey was earnestly
trying to better their lives and their community but that Cuban workers
and officials refused to cooperate. In a typically imperialist manner, Mr.
40
Interview with J. G. Salinas, 1975, box 9, folder 30, Wallace Research Collection, Hershey
Community Archives.
41
Interview with Antonio Espinosa, 1957, box 9, folder 32, Wallace Research Collection, Hershey
Community Archives.
42
Interview with Antonio Espinosa.
43
Interview with John G. Snavely, 1954, 1956, box 4, folder 15, Wallace Research Collection,
Hershey Community Archives.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 351
Railroad Tie-Up Theatre,” Havana Post, Apr. 26, 1926, box 6, folder 17, Wallace Research Collection,
Hershey Community Archives; “Hershey Rail Trouble Taken to Washington,” Havana Post, Mar. 16,
1926.
47
“Hershey Rail Trouble Taken to Washington.”
48
“Will Not Submit to Direction from Labor Union Delegates.”
49
“Milton Hershey Receives Honor of Cuban Cross,” Feb. 1, 1933, box 7, folder 4, Wallace
Research Collection, Hershey Community Archives.
50
Benjamin, The United States and Cuba, 99.
51
P. A. Staples to Milton Hershey, 1934, box 7, folder 5, Wallace Research Collection, Hershey
Community Archives.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 353
52
Paul Wallace, “Personal Observations of Hershey Cuba,” 1957, box 9, folder 27, Wallace
Research Collection, Hershey Community Archives.
53
“Instructions to Guides,” 1934, box 10, folder 11, Wallace Research Collection, Hershey
Community Archives.
354 CATHERINE KOONAR October
to inform visitors that everyone was working, no one had been laid off,
and there had been no reduction in wages.54 The chocolate industry did
not suffer the way many businesses did during the 1930s; because Hershey
dominated the market, it remained profitable. Chocolate sales did sag
during the Depression, but the low cost of raw materials and two decades
of vertical integration protected against the effects of economic decline.55
Steady supplies of Hershey-produced milk and sugar enabled the company
to further insulate itself. However, American sugar refiners were pushing
for higher tariffs on foreign sugar producers, and politicians from beet
sugar–producing states complained that American farmers were unable
to compete with cheap sugar from the Caribbean, South America, and
the Pacific.56 Despite these obstacles and the uncertainty surrounding the
future of the company’s Cuban operations, Hershey, Pennsylvania, never
felt the effects of the Depression as acutely as other areas of the country.
Even Hershey residents, some of whom were resentful of Mr. Hershey’s
paternalism and did not feel that they were “being taken care of ” as work-
ers, credited him with helping the town survive the Depression. Harold
Hamilton, for example, recalled, “It was bad, but not near as bad, because
he found work [for people] and he paid them.”57 Even when hours were
reduced, almost everyone in Hershey was working, and they “learned
how to exist on that.”58 Another resident, Joe Skinner, saw Hershey’s
Depression-era construction boom somewhat differently. As a result of the
difficult financial times, Mr. Hershey was able to hire master carpenters
and other craftsmen for fifty cents an hour or less. Skinner acknowledged
that Mr. Hershey did “create a lot of work and keep people from starving,”
but he was hesitant to describe Hershey’s actions as philanthropic.59 To
Skinner, Milton Hershey’s investment in infrastructure during the 1930s
was opportunistic. Much of the construction focused on the town’s tourist
infrastructure. The luxurious Hotel Hershey opened in 1933.60
The Depression was particularly difficult for Hershey’s Italian popula-
tion, many of whom had been drawn to Swatara Station outside Hershey
54
“Instructions to Guides.”
55
D’Antonio, Hershey, 196–97; “Philanthropy Gets Hershey Millions,” New York Times, Apr. 8,
1937.
Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization.
56
Hamilton OHI.
57
58
Hamilton OHI.
59
Joe Skinner Oral History Interview, 1982, 89OH69, Hershey Community Archives.
60
“New Hotel Hershey Brochure,” ca. 1934, box 11, folder 24, Wallace Research Collection,
Hershey Community Archives.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 355
61
Richard Evans Oral History Interview, June 15, 2000, 2000OH06, Hershey Community
Archives; Millie Landis Oral History Interview, May 28, 1990, 89OH31, Hershey Community
Archives.
62
Hershey was (and remains) a fairly homogenous town. The majority of its residents were
descended from Pennsylvania Dutch or British stock. Italians, as a result of large-scale migration in
the early twentieth century, became a sizeable ethnic minority in Hershey. Their language and the fact
that they were Catholic rather than Protestant made integration difficult at first. For more on Italian
migration in this period, see Donna Gabaccia, Militants and Migrants: Rural Sicilians Become American
Workers (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988).
63
Evans OHI; Hamilton OHI; DeSantis OHI.
64
Carol Quirke, Eyes on Labor: News Photography and America’s Working Class (New York, 2012),
121. There was very little racial diversity in Hershey. There may have been one black family living in
Hershey, but conflict between the newer Italian families and older residents of British and German
descent was certainly front of mind for many workers and residents. This was amplified during the
Depression, when work was harder to come by.
65
Samuel Tancredi Oral History Interview, July 30, 1990, 90OH18, Hershey Community
Archives; Alda Walenkiewicz Oral History Interview, Nov. 15, 1989, 89OH26, Hershey Community
Archives.
66
S. Tancredi OHI.
356 CATHERINE KOONAR October
during the Depression because losing a job with the Hershey Company
made it extremely difficult to find other employment in the region.
In addition to their concerns about factory work itself, some employees
also complained about daily life in Hershey. They felt that goods at the
Hershey store were too costly, complained that they did not have enough
leisure time to enjoy the town’s amenities, and claimed that, even if they
were given time off, they could not afford the fees to use such facilities as the
Hershey Community Club.67 Some workers complained that Mr. Hershey,
whose attention was on the school and building the town’s reputation as
a tourist destination rather than on the needs of factory workers, had for-
gotten them. Combined with the broad economic and social issues of the
1930s, this local dissatisfaction fostered discontent in Hershey. In early
1937, some workers began to discuss unionization. There had been some
earlier attempts to organize Hershey workers, but the situation was much
different during the Depression. Stories about labor action and unioniza-
tion were prominent in local and national newspapers and magazines, and
there was a growing interest in unionization among Hershey chocolate
workers.68 This gave the newly formed United Chocolate Workers union
(UCW), which claimed to represent 1,700 of the 2,500 Hershey choco-
late workers, an opportunity to coordinate with the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO), which had been gaining power across the country.69
A coordinated sit-down strike, during which UCW members occupied
the plant in shifts of 400, began on April 2, 1937.70 Hershey management
and loyal residents attempted to foster resentment between the unionists
and the larger community, deploying slogans including “Sit Down Strike
is a Strike Against Orphan Boys.” Some managers blamed the strike on
foreign influences in the plant, namely Italian workers.71
Despite strong pro-union sentiment among many workers, in the
wider community those who were loyal to Mr. Hershey outnumbered the
strikers. Ann Dusman, who lived in Hershey at the time, remembered
Quirke, 122. For more on the rise of the CIO, see, for example, Art Preis, Labor’s Giant Step:
68
Twenty Years of the CIO (New York, 1972); Jonathan Cutler, Labor’s Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW,
and the Struggle for American Unionism (Philadelphia, 2004); Robert H. Zieger and Gilbert J. Gall,
American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century (Baltimore, 2002); and Robert H. Zieger,
The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995).
69
Robert S. Bird, “CIO Strike Ends at Hershey Plant,” New York Times, Apr. 13, 1937.
70
Robert E. Weir, “Dark Chocolate: Lessons from the 1937 Hershey Sit-down Strike,” Labor
History 56 (2015): 42.
71
S. Tancredi OHI; Quirke, Eyes on Labor.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 357
her father saying that “it was terrible that they were striking against Mr.
Hershey.”72 Rachel Schantz, another resident, described the striking work-
ers as “stubborn, ugly, and destructive.”73 Letters and telegrams support-
ing Hershey against the strikers also poured in during the labor conflict.
Former Hershey residents, past students at the Industrial School, and town
visitors all threw their support behind Mr. Hershey. Supporters often con-
flated the company and Mr. Hershey himself. They saw objections to the
way the factory was being run, complaints about supervisors, and demands
for wage increases and union representation as direct attacks against the
town’s founder. Ardent supporters also resented this deviation from their
image of the town as a peaceful place that was removed from the pain of
the Depression and the labor struggles that had affected other industries.
The conflict came to a head when loyal workers and about four thou-
sand local dairy farmers, whose livelihoods were being threatened by
the factory shutdown, demonstrated their devotion to Mr. Hershey and
his company by arming themselves with clubs and pitchforks and vio-
lently removing the strikers from the factory.74 The company officially
quashed the strike on April 7, 1947. It established a company union, the
Independent Chocolate Workers (ICW, also known as the Loyal Workers
Club), to challenge the UCW and CIO for the right to represent workers
in all collective bargaining. The ICW argued that the CIO threatened
“peace and security.”75 As part of the agreement that ended the strike at
the Hershey plant, a National Labor Relations Board–supervised election
was held in which all Hershey employees could vote on CIO affiliation.
Ultimately, the vote was nearly two to one against the CIO. This refer-
endum on the CIO in Hershey left the plant divided between those who
wanted outside representation and those who were “loyal” to the com-
pany.76 When the vote count was announced, Russel Behman, president
of the United Chocolate Workers of America, vowed “not [to] give up our
fight to organize the employees of the Hershey Chocolate Corporation
72
Ann Dusman Oral History Interview, July 23, 1996, 96OH11, Hershey Community Archives.
73
Rachel Schantz Oral History Interview, Sept. 5, 2000, 2000OH11, Hershey Community
Archives.
74
Bernard G. and H. Elizabeth Ganse Oral History Interview, Aug. 19, 2003, 2003OH09,
Hershey Community Archives; Robert S. Bird, “CIO Ends Strike at Hershey Plant,” New York Times,
Apr. 13, 1937.
75
Quirke, Eyes on Labor, 125; John R. Zoll Interview, Mar. 22, 1955, box 7, folder 12, Wallace
Research Collection, Hershey Community Archives.
76
Bird, “CIO Ends Strike at Hershey Plant”; “Hershey Workers Vote Down CIO Union as
Collective Bargaining Agency by 2 to 1,” New York Times, Apr. 24, 1937.
358 CATHERINE KOONAR October
“Hershey Workers Vote Down CIO Union as Collective Bargaining Agency by 2 to 1.”
77
Board’s Exhibits 1, 2, 3 in Case No. IV-C-242, Apr. 23, 1938, Box 1199, RG 25, National
78
should be thankful for the privilege of living and working there. The wider
media coverage of the Hershey strike similarly emphasized the fact that
Hershey did not look like an industrial town. The national media described
Hershey in the same way that the company promoted itself, and it rarely
covered the workers’ demands with any depth of analysis.81 Hershey’s pop-
ularity as a destination associated with much more than just chocolate
production was central to the company’s (and the media’s) ability to frame
the issue in this way. By the late 1930s, the Hershey brand was beloved
by American consumers, the town was a popular destination for relax-
ation and leisure, and Mr. Hershey was respected as a great industrialist
and philanthropist. This affection allowed the company and its supporters
to portray unionists as greedy and ungrateful and labor organization as
unnecessary and ultimately incompatible with Mr. Hershey’s vision.
In the late 1930s, Hershey had to confront issues that it had, until the
sit-down strike, been able to ignore. Labor conflict may have poked some
holes in Hershey’s utopian image, but it continued to be America’s candy
bar, and Mr. Hershey was still the “king of chocolate.” The important role
the company played in the war effort further solidified its largely positive
public image. The Ration D Bar, developed in concert with the US gov-
ernment during World War II, tasted like chocolate, but its texture was
chewier, and it contained fortifying ingredients that offered energy and
sustenance to American troops abroad. It was also engineered to survive
long periods of time in a soldier’s pocket without melting.82 During the
war, Hershey received five Army-Navy E awards for excellence. This was
the second-most in the country; the only other consumer product that
played such a prominent role in the war effort was Coca-Cola. As part of
military ration boxes, the Hershey Ration D bar traveled the world with
American soldiers as a reminder of home, but it also became an important
symbol of Americanness for liberated peoples.83
In 1945, Milton Hershey died at the age of eighty-eight. His death
affected everyone in the Hershey community and its larger diaspora. The
81
“Upheaval in Utopia,” Time, Apr. 19, 1937; “In Mr. Hershey’s Utopia Farmers and Strikers War,”
Life, Apr. 19, 1937; “Behind the Strife in Hershey,” Business Week, Apr. 17, 1937.
82
E. Tancredi OHI. The company also developed the Tropical Bar, which was part of soldiers’
rations during World War II in the Pacific. After the war, the Ration D was discontinued, and the
Tropical Bar became standard for US troops through the Vietnam War. The Desert Bar was developed
for distribution during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s.
83
D’Antonio, Hershey, 234. Other chocolate companies, like Mars, have more eagerly pursued
sales outside the United States. Today, Mars is a much larger player on a global scale, but Hershey is,
as it always has been, king of chocolate in the United States.
360 CATHERINE KOONAR October
company lost its founder and the person who had shaped the firm’s direc-
tion since its inception. The town lost its architect and patriarch. For a
place that had relied (for better or for worse) on the vision of one man for
half a century, his death had many wondering what was next. People from
all over the country, most notably former Milton Hershey School students,
wrote letters expressing their grief. When faced with important decisions,
Hershey executives found themselves asking, “What would Milton do?”
or “What would Milton think?”84 The company’s success was so tied to
a singular vision that it took time for management to take steps toward
modernization.
Hershey was built on the principle that “all the world loves chocolate,
and all the world will buy chocolate from whoever makes it best and makes
it easy to buy.”85 In the United States, this meant Hershey’s chocolate. In
the fifty years since Milton Hershey founded the town and began to sell
Hershey’s chocolate products, the candy bar had become synonymous in
the United States with the name Hershey. Mr. Hershey had also worked
hard to make his town synonymous with culture, recreation, sports, edu-
cation, and progress. He placed a community building in the center of
town and brought music, theater, and art from around the world to cen-
tral Pennsylvania. He encouraged tourists to take in a play, a concert, or
a sports match while they were visiting the factory. Hershey Estates, the
entity responsible for all non-chocolate operations in Hershey, described
the countryside around the town as “clean and untouched by the smoke
and dust of cities.”86 It was a center of industry, but it was also a place for
relaxation and leisure.
Following the Second World War, a surging economy, increasing lei-
sure time, and the predominance of the automobile changed the way
84
William E. Dearden Oral History Interview, Sept. 29, 1989, 89OH06, Hershey Community
Archives.
85
“Hershey Pennsylvania: 50th Anniversary of the Chocolate Town, 1903–1953,” 1953, 85009,
box 3; folder 38, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company Collection, Hershey Community
Archives.
86
“Hershey Pennsylvania: 50th Anniversary of the Chocolate Town, 1903–1953.” As time went
on, Hershey also began to capitalize on seasonal attractions: Hersheypark in the Dark, held on the
weekend leading up to Halloween, and Hersheypark Christmas Candylane, which runs from mid-
November to January 1.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 361
Americans traveled. More people were able to travel longer distances more
easily and affordably. In 1955, when Disneyland opened, the way peo-
ple viewed amusement parks also changed.87 By the 1960s, a worn-down
Hersheypark was struggling to attract visitors, and the unfenced layout
made it vulnerable to vandalism and vagrancy. The 1970s marked a turn-
ing point in the park’s history, beginning with fencing it in and charging
admission fees. In order to complete the multiphase redevelopment,
Hershey Estates hired the same company that had designed Disneyland
and entrusted them with transforming Hersheypark into a modern theme
park.88 James Bobb, then president of Hershey Estates, stressed that the
redevelopment sought to modernize the park but also “highlight the
cultural and historical aspects of Hershey and the surrounding areas of
Pennsylvania.”89 Nostalgic elements, including Pennsylvania Dutch Place,
Tudor Square, and Rhineland, were combined with new rides, the rede-
velopment of the zoo, live entertainment, and product characters (the
Hershey Bar and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, for example) that strolled
through the park and interacted with children.
While Hersheypark was suffering, chocolate factory tours were more
popular than ever. In the summer months, factory guides handled ten to
twelve thousand people per day.90 By the 1970s, millions of people visited
the Hershey factory annually. Factory tours emerged from the Progressive-
Era desire of industrial food producers to demonstrate to the public that
the process of large-scale food production was safe, clean, and pure.91 Even
for people who lived in Hershey, it was “exciting to see the real thing—
to go into the factory and actually see it,” as Dena Thomas recalled, and
employees were encouraged to invite their friends and family to take the
guided tour.92 In the early 1970s, however, the factory was closed to the
public. The constant flow of visitors brought in large amounts of body
heat, which caused problems in the wrapping room. The decision to close
87
Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lanham, MD, 2010); Janet Wasko,
Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy (Malden, MA, 2001); Pamela Cassidy Whitenack,
Hersheypark (Charleston, SC, 2006).
88
“Information on the Expansion of Hersheypark,” ca. 1971, 85007, box 3, folder 46, Hershey
Entertainment and Resorts Company Collection, Hershey Community Archives.
89
“Hersheypark News: Press Release Regarding Hersheypark Updates,” 1971, 85007, box 5, folder
9, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company Collection, Hershey Community Archives.
90
Austin C. Geiling Jr. Oral History Interview, 1991, 91OH30, Hershey Community Archives.
91
See, for example, Petrick, “Purity as Life”; Koehn, “Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the
Late Nineteenth Century”; and Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American
Mass Market (New York, 1989).
92
Dena Thomas Oral History Interview, Mar. 28, 2006, 2006OH06, Hershey Community
Archives; “Hershey’s Guiding Principles.”
362 CATHERINE KOONAR October
also emerged from concerns over visitor safety, the challenge of emergency
evacuations, and fears regarding sanitation and cleanliness.93
Chocolate World, designed to replace factory tours, opened in the sum-
mer of 1973.94 Adjacent to the new Hersheypark entrance, the attraction
was designed to accommodate eighteen thousand people per day. While
Chocolate World operated separately from Hersheypark, it was significant
in Hershey’s transition to a theme park. Chocolate World simulates parts
of the process of chocolate production, from cocoa plantations in the trop-
ics to making chocolate in Hershey. It also includes food service facilities
and shops selling Hershey products and memorabilia. Hershey resident
Pat Brandt recalled that it did not recreate the factory, but “they tried
to make it look very much like it, and, you know, a lot of it they did, but
it wasn’t like going through the factory.”95 While visitors missed the real
factory tours, Chocolate World appealed to children and thus fit well into
the future Hershey Estates envisioned for the town as a family-orientated
destination.
Beginning in the 1960s, advertising and marketing strategy also began
to change. Milton Hershey had always relied on the reputation of the
company to sell products; even in the 1960s, Hershey was the only Fortune
500 company without a marketing department.96 The chocolate and candy
market had changed considerably since the early twentieth century, but the
company had not made any progress in how it approached advertising or
sales. With Mars salespeople in every region of the United States, Hershey
was playing catch-up.
Since the company’s establishment in the early twentieth century,
Hershey’s products had dominated the American market. In 1973, Mars
moved ahead of Hershey for the first time.97 The Hershey bar was still
popular and widely consumed, but the chocolate and candy market had
changed, and Hershey needed to make some institutional changes in order
to compete with Mars in this new confectionary landscape. When Bill
Dearden, a former Milton Hershey School boy, was hired to design and
93
Robert H. Schock Oral History Interview, Dec. 13, 1990, 90OH30, Hershey Community
Archives.
94
The company has since redesigned Chocolate World. While parts of the ride still recreate milk
chocolate making for visitors, features for young children—including singing animatronic cows and
Hershey product characters—now predominate.
95
Pat Brandt Oral History Interview, 2006, 2006HS17, Hershey Community Archives.
96
Joël Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars (New
York, 1999).
97
Brenner, 227.
2018 MAKING CHOCOLATE AMERICAN 363
head the new marketing department at Hershey Foods in the late 1960s, he
moved to increase the efficiency of the advertising and sales strategy. Over
time Hershey managed to retake the top spot in the US candy market.
In the past, the Hershey Company had considered modest in-store dis-
plays, the town and its amenities, and postcards inside candy bar wrappers
to be sufficient promotion for its products. In the 1970s, however, the
company decided to pursue a more aggressive advertising strategy, acquir-
ing and introducing new products (for example, Reese’s and Hershey’s
Special Dark), making sure the products they advertised were prominently
featured in stores, and targeting holiday shoppers.98 Hershey also tried to
focus its advertising on children and young people, and it looked for product
placement opportunities. For example, Reese’s Pieces made a now-iconic
appearance in the 1982 movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The company
also put resources into fighting the “junk food” label and the argument that
children’s access to confections should be limited.99 Starting a marketing
department was a huge step for the company. When Milton Hershey died
in 1945, the managers and executives who had worked with him directly,
many of them for decades, took over operations of the Hershey Chocolate
Company. Mr. Hershey had made nearly every decision for the company
since its foundation, and his successors strived to continue his practices. It
was not until the next generation of corporate leaders assumed control in
the late 1960s and early 1970s that the question “What would Milton do?”
faded into the background of the company ethos.
Conclusion
98
Larry D. Johns Oral History Interview, Aug. 6, 1991, 91OH1991, Hershey Community
Archives.
99
Earl J. Spangler Oral History Interview, Dec. 12, 1989, 89OH30, Hershey Community Archives.
364 CATHERINE KOONAR October