A True One Percenter

"My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know, but because of their exceptional need to know more."

Milton Hershey (1857-1945)

In his late teens and early twenties Milton Hershey traveled with his salesman father on lengthy trips.

Paying attention and learning, but knowing he did not want to be a salesman, at 27 he established the Lancaster Caramel Company utilizing a recipe he had picked up during his sales travels.

Impressed with the machinery to make German chocolate at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, he bought it!

He felt chocolate, not caramel, to be the future, and was enamored of the newfangled Swiss milk chocolate produced as a luxury item.  Having access to fresh milk he determined to come up with a formula to produce affordable and delicious milk chocolate to sell to the American public.

After three years of trial and error he began construction on his own chocolate manufacturing plant, in the center of dairy farmland in central Pennsylvania.  Surrounded with milk producers, and using his knowledge of how to infuse milk with caramel, he transferred that knowledge into the production of his own brand of milk chocolate.  His formula was perfected and he was ready to take off in business.

THE REST IS HISTORY!

With Hershey's financial support, a community of houses, businesses, churches and public transportation sprang up around his production plant.  He saw even more.  And he went about developing that vision.

He saw a complete town filled with single and double-family brick homes, with streets lined with beautiful trees and garden-filled, grassy lawns.  Avoiding the row-house communities so popular in towns of the era, he went about creating something more.

What did he do?  He used his company PROFITS to benefit his employees, their families and their community.

• He built a model town complete with the comfortable homes he envisioned for his employees.
• His community included schools, churches and public transportation.
• In 1907 he built Hershey Park, complete with amusement rides, a swimming pool with water slides and a ballroom.
• Creating a train depot, trolley cars and trains could bring visitors to his town and recreational park.
• Establishing a sugar factory in Cuba, he established a similar town for employees there, that included homes, schools, churches and a railroad traveling between his town of Matanzas and Havana.  That train traveled the 60 miles back and forth, carrying sugar and people in electric cars.
• In 1909 a Deed of Trust founded the Hershey Industrial School.  This was a K-12 private boarding school which educated impoverished orphans.
• In 1918 he transferred a majority of his assets to benefit the Industrial School.
• In 1935 he established the private, charitable M.S. Hershey Foundation to fund The Hershey Museum, The Hershey Gardens, The Hershey Theater and The Hershey Community Archives.
• The Milton Hershey School Trust gifted the people of Pennsylvania with the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA.  His initial $50 million endowment went toward establishing that as a teaching hospital. 
• During WWII he supplied the US armed forces with Ration D Bars and Tropical Chocolate Bars.  They were designed not to melt in tropical weather!  During the war he supplied over 3 billion of these bars.

What else has Hershey done since his death in 1945?

• He has trained thousands of businessmen and women.
• He has employed hundreds of thousands of people, improving their lives and the lives of their families.
• He has provided enjoyment, relaxation and pleasure to, again, millions of people with his ever-expanding amusement park.
• He established the Hershey Hotel, a beautiful facility up on the hill overlooking his park.  FROM THERE AS GUESTS OF THE HOTEL, WE WATCHED THE FABULOUS FIREWORKS THIS PAST 4TH OF JULY!

OBVIOUSLY A 1 PERCENTER, I THINK HE SHOULD BE FORCED TO "GIVE BACK."*


* For sure I say that tongue in cheek.  Would this man not be derided today as the "filthy" rich, stealing his ill-gotten gains from off the backs of those around him, keeping profits and money to himself at the expense of those who have not, because of a simple lack of luck, won life's lottery?

Who should GIVE BACK?  Thieves, robbers, scammers and murderers; those who would harm children and women for their own "pleasure" or gain; people illegally arriving here, from all over the world, under the guise of a false "immigration," taught by agencies how to mooch off of gimmes while they try to turn our society into the same kind of hell hole they fled; embezzlers and cheats; brilliant computer minds who find sport in harming others or stealing their identities and money.  That can't be a complete list, but it's a great start!

THESE SHOULD BE FORCED, AND I MEAN FORCED, TO GIVE BACK, AND GIVE BACK AND GIVE BACK UNTIL THEY HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE.  AND THEN THEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM SOCIETY SO THEY CAN'T TAKE AGAIN.  THESE ARE TAKERS, NOT GIVERS.  WE NEED MORE GIVERS IN OUR WORLD. 

WE NEED A SOCIETY, AND GUBMENT, THAT PROMOTES OUR GIVERS AND MAKES IT EASIER FOR THEM TO DO WHAT THEY DO BEST SO THEY CAN GIVE MORE.


WE NEED MORE MILTON S. HERSHEYS.