Bitter Chocolate by Carol Off Page B

education, and Henry dragged his son from school to school while Fanny insisted that the boy needed to settle down and learn how to run a farm. She loathed her husband’s library, and much later—when it seemed he was finally gone for good—she happily burned all his books. For his part, Henry had nothing but scorn for Fanny’s faith, calling his fellow Mennonites “the gray-minded people who cannot rejoice.”
    With so much disruption in his schooling, Milton acquired only the most rudimentary reading and writing skills and had no knowledge of the farm business at all. By the time he reached puberty, his parents concurred (one of the few occasions) that the only hope for the young lad was for him to learn a trade. Henry’s love for the printed word persuaded him that his sonshould apprentice in a newspaper office, but the plan was a disaster. Milton was as unfocused and whimsical as his father and couldn’t set his mind to the precise work of typesetting. He managed to jam the machines (deliberately, according to some accounts) and he soon lost his first job. Whatever plan Henry had in mind for Milton after that fiasco, he never got the chance to exercise it. Soon after, Fanny showed him the door, and Henry wandered off to seek his fortune elsewhere.
    As far as his mother could figure out, the only thing that seemed to interest young Milton was candy. Every Saturday, when the family took their farm produce to market, Milton would use whatever money he had earned running errands for people to buy himself sweets—nougats, sour balls, licorice and lollipops. But Milton’s addiction to sweets also gave Fanny an inspiration: her son would go to work for Joe Royer at his Ice Cream Parlour and Garden and learn how to make candy.
    As soon as he arrived at Royer’s shop, Milton found his calling. He was no scientist, and he had none of the qualifications of the great candy-makers of the world, but he loved the alchemy of sugar mixed with flavours, the boiling and mixing, the transition, at a specific temperature, from liquid to perfect solid.
    His spinster aunt gave Milton $150 to set up his own business, but he proved to have as much aptitude for money management as his father. He sold too many products. Along with basic items such as candied fruit and dried nuts, Milton tried to make and sell a vast range of sweets, including throat lozenges (his father had advised him that these new medicinal candies were the future) and French Secrets—bonbons with sentimental verses written inside the little paper wrappers. Milton couldn’t stay ahead of the creditors; in particular, he fell behind in his payments for imported sugar, the mainstay of his enterprise. The business sank into insolvency, and Milton collapsed with nervous fatigue.
    Henry Hershey had gone out west, like many restless Americans who sought their fortunes, and Milton soon joined himthere. But it was Milton, not his father, who struck gold. The young Hershey got work with a candy-maker in Denver, Colorado, who specialized in particularly fine-tasting caramels. Through stealth and curiosity, Milton learned the man’s secret: the Denver confectioner was adding fresh milk to the product. Most caramels were manufactured with paraffin, which rendered them chewy but added little else. Milk made the candy smooth and creamy, even buttery. Milton hurried back east, where he worked by day for a candy-maker and by night for himself, cooking up batches of these caramels. His mother and aunt joined him and, with the last of their funds, they set up yet another business. Since there were no family members left who would lend the young Milton money, this was probably Milton’s last kick at the can.
    The story from here is the stuff of legends—the mythical American dream realized. An Englishman happened to sample Hershey’s wares one day and pronounced them the best caramels he had ever tasted. Would Hershey be interested