Milton Hershey

Milton Hershey was born near Derry Church, Pennsylvania in 1857. He went to school until the fourth grade at which time he apprenticed to a printer. When Hershey turned eighteen he opened a candy business in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The business failed after six years. After living in Denver, Colorado, Milton Hershey moved back to Pennsylvania and opened Lancaster Caramel Company. The company was quite successful. In 1894 he opened Hershey Chocolate Company as a subsidiary to make chocolate coating for his caramel. In 1900 he sold Lancaster Caramel Company but kept Hershey Chocolate. In 1903 Hershey built the world's largest chocolate producing factory in what would later become Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Milton and Catherine Hershey could not have any children. This inspired them to open the Hershey Industrial School, renamed in 1909 to the Milton Hershey School. The high school was intended for orphan boys or boys from broken homes. When Milton Hershey died in 1945, he willed his entire stake in his company to the school he founded.

“God speaks through men to speak the truth, our hands to do His work here below, voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate.”

“I am a Christian in the only sense that Christ wished anyone to be, sincerely attached to his doctrine in preference to all others. I became a Mennonite when I went to church with my mother, and I am still a Mennonite.”

“We should deal with one another not as classes but as persons, as brothers. The more closely we work together, the more effectively can we contribute to the better health of all mankind; this should be our common objective and its achievement would make the world a happier place in which to live.”

“The value of our good is not measured by what it does, but by the amount of good it does to the one concerned.”

“If the-wrong people or organization get control, they can spend or give away more money in a short time than I have made in my life, to build monuments unto themselves, for their own financial gains, ego and recognition-- whose heads would swell and hearts would shrink, who would give to those who had plenty and take away from those who had little or none”
- Milton Hershey