The Moral Meltdown of Milton Hershey’s Empire and Vision
Milton Snavely Hershey, the founder the famous candy empire first launched in 1905, was certainly no stranger to failure and setback in his early years of business.
Before the milk chocolate bar bearing his name became a household product in America, M.S. Hershey suffered a string of defeats, including numerous candy and caramel ventures in Philadelphia, New York and Chicago that he was forced to shut down. But then came the Lancaster Caramel Company that he was able to expand and ultimately sell for one million dollars in 1900. It was an extraordinary sum, and it allowed him to buy farmland and then build the factory that would rocket him to fame and riches.
Born into a Mennonite family, Milton never poured himself into formal religious practice, instead insisting that he was content to follow “The Golden Rule,” the Ten Commandments and Old and New Testament teachings.
“God speaks through men to speak the truth,” Mr. Hershey once said. “Our hands to do His work here below, voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate.”
The pursuit of truth was a recurring theme for the “Chocolate King” – and he used his riches to try and help as many people as possible live and thrive honestly and truthfully in an uneven world.
Just a few years into the company’s rise, Mr. Hershey founded the Hershey Industrial School designed to educate and care for orphans. The school would expand over the years, primarily thanks to Milton establishing a $60 million trust fund to sustain the institution. Today, the trust fund is estimated to be nearly $15 billion, and there are nearly 2,000 students enrolled.
But if truth were a premium and non-negotiable for Milton Hershey, one has to wonder what he would think of his company’s promotional efforts to celebrate International Women’s Day by featuring a “HerShe” candy bar wrapper being ballyhooed by a biological male who believes he’s a woman.
Fae Johnstone is the activist who identifies as an “2SLGBTQUIA+ activist.” Incidentally, the numbers and letters allegedly translate to “Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual”.
This isn’t the Hershey Bar of our youth, that’s for sure.
Once upon a time, the Hershey Bar was the gold standard for chocolate. During World War II, soldiers overseas relied heavily and regularly on Hershey products. They were part of field rations, and were even distributed via the Red Cross for prisoners of war.
What would someone from the Greatest Generation think of receiving a chocolate bar with the “HerShe” pronoun pasted on the wrapper?
Milton Hershey recognized that reliable and trustworthy companies were truthful – in the integrity of the product and the sincerity of the advertising. Sadly, there is nothing truthful about featuring a biological man who is identifying as a woman – and using the spectacle to ostensibly celebrate the female sex.
The famed chocolatier often shared with people that he and his wife were scheduled to be on the maiden voyage of the ill-fated Titanic back in 1912. The business forced him to make a last-minute scheduling change, a timely shuffle that saved him and his wife’s life. Unfortunately, this ill-conceived marketing ploy enjoyed no such reprieve.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul J. Batura is a writer and vice president of communications for Focus on the Family. He’s authored numerous books including “Chosen for Greatness: How Adoption Changes the World,” “Good Day! The Paul Harvey Story” and “Mentored by the King: Arnold Palmer's Success Lessons for Golf, Business, and Life.” Paul can be reached via email: [email protected] or Twitter @PaulBatura
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