Patriots Voice News Hershey Bars & Brains

Milton S. Hershey’s mother was the daughter of a Calvinist Reformed Church Mennonite Minister. Her Calvinist idea that success was given to those God favored seeped into young Milton. She never wavered in her faith in him throughout his life and backed him in every business venture. She didn’t want him to turn out like his father Henry who tried valiantly to “make it” and failed 17 times, and she waspishly kept a running total of all 17 of them. The family was somewhat dysfunctional as we would view it, with the mother and the father separating most of their life, but on another level they were, the whole bunch, strivers after the American ideal of “making it.”

Milton did finally “make it” after nearly as many failures as his father. But where he differed from this father was in the way he totally committed himself to a venture and his constancy in staying focused on a single area of endeavor. Henry’s bookishness worked against him sticking to any one thing long enough to succeed at it. The mother rejected this very intellectualism and encouraged young Milton to avoid it. She even burned her erstwhile husband’s hated books upon his death. That’s how strong she felt, and how strong she was.

Hershey is in many ways is a paradigm for America and the God given spirit that is its greatness, and glory. But he represented our worst side too. He was short on learning, usually not a good thing, and he married late at 40 to a Catholic girl and had no children. It is not clear what he or his father’s religion was, but whatever it was, his understanding of what God and his country needed was not very clear.

What he did understand, he understood well and acted upon it, but great men make great mistakes, and in his case they are there. He set up this, in some ways, grotesque, orphans home, which, although he probably didn’t intend it, has become another part of the arrays of precursor examples of the present plague of totalitarian, nanny, welfare state plantations that America is turning to.

He died in October 1945, after his Hershey bars had become the symbol for American domination of the world. US troops on every continent ate Hershey bars to fuel their resolve. God, providentially, took Katherine (Kitty) Sweeney, the wife that his Mennonite mother had described as “the arrival of pride and vanity,” at an early age in 1915.

Today we must learn what we can from what has gone before, and surely we can see what was best and what was worst in Milton S. Hershey’s life. He made a great fortune selling a deadly drug to the masses of the American people, the drug of choice of his time, which was a harmful concoction of caffeine and other drugs plus tons of sugar. As unhealthful a poison pill as one could imagine. It should have been, and should now be, illegal to sell this poison candy to school children.

He was prescient in that he somehow knew that he was “on to something.” Milk Chocolate is, absolutely, not easy to make, and was very difficult to make inexpensively. He managed to do for chocolate what Henry Ford did for cars. He made it cheaply so poor people could glut themselves on it no matter how little money they had. He drove all other confectioners to the wall with the double addictiveness of both sugar and caffeine. Only Coke was able to equal his skill at creating a cheap drug that the masses could drown their troubles in, or more likely intensify their troubles with.

He specialized and exampled our latter day Government “Nanny State” that “plans” and “socializes” and “builds” and “provides” for everyone from cradle to grave. Hershey Town is just a big Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Welfare State experiment, only done with private money and private initiative instead of being constructed by a totalitarian government. On one level it is better that these things be done privately, if they are to be done at all, but on another level one must see them as encouraging dependency, and a plantation mentality of serving and being cared for by “Big Brother.”

His social engineering instinct is illustrated, pointedly, by his design of a round dinning room in the his fabulous hotel, he called, as everything is called, in a land based on the cult of personality, Hershey Hotel. He made the dinning room round because he didn’t want anyone to be able to be seated in a corner because they weren’t a good tipper. This kind of potato patch Communist egalitarianism dogs all his works, good and otherwise. His government type orphans home was called Hershey Industrial School. One can’t help but think of the “Industrial” schools named after Stalin that taught these fatherless bastards to love the state and by implication hate the family.

All in all, he and his works are a national treasure, but let’s not forget what he did not do right, and what he actually did wrong, and try not to repeat his mistakes, but rather learn from them. And what were they?

First, even though God blessed him with good health, good genes, a good mind and adequate resources, he had, to our knowledge, no children. This is little short of murder. If his wife could not have had children he could have, and should have, had children either by divorcing her or by having them out of wedlock with a healthy woman. Nor did he remarry when he could have, after her death, but denied life and sulked and hermited, and did not do his duty to God, man and country by having more children. Selfish! Selfish! He, likely, denied his own children the right to be born. Now let’s be generous and say it might have been him that was sterile. Ok! But all these great wealthy men of his time weren’t sterile, and most of them had two, one or none, children. So, go figure! In many ways he, and them, were the world’s most selfish and mean men.

Secondly, he could have left his money for, and paid some attention to, the more basic needs of the country, and the evil direction he could see it was going. But, no! He frittered his money away on silly things, such as his orphan home “Industrial School.” Now, orphan’s should be cared for, but, excuse me, they should be cared for by their families, not in “1984” style child raising totalitarian type factories.

Your comments will be appreciated. The attempt here, as in much of what we present, is to give students and the general public a focused, working, knowledge on as many topics as possible in as concentrated a form as possible. In this age of information-overload we want our donors to read less with greater effect. We make no pretense, (and that is what it is,) of objectivity. No one is, or can be, objective. They can only pretend to be. We have a subjective viewpoint, and it is transparent. If you think we have overlooked something that could help our benefactors and supporters, let us know. Obviously, we have generalized and exercised selectivity in the service of honesty, brevity and clarity. You may contact WNU Washington National University at PatriotsVoice1776@hotmail.com or write us at Leadership Forum Coalition PO Box 2324 Vienna VA 22183–2324. Your donation, gift, grant or bequest will be put to good use. Thank You