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He seemed destined to be defined by a string of failures.
Milton Snavely was born in 1853 in southern Pennsylvania. His father was constantly chasing new “get rich quick” business schemes that never succeeded. As a result, their family was constantly moving, and Milton’s childhood was a whirlwind of new houses and new faces. He eventually dropped out of school after the fourth grade and became an apprentice for the printer of a German-speaking newspaper. He was fired after he dropped his hat into an expensive printing press, causing a major mechanical jam. His mother stepped in and arranged for him to serve as an apprentice for a local confectioner. Milton found it invigorating and he stayed for a few years.
But Milton Snavely was a young man with vision and dreams and goals, and when he was 19 years old, he decided to go into business for himself. He moved to Philadelphia and opened a small store. But vision and dreams and goals don’t necessarily equal success, and despite working eighteen-hour days and pouring every ounce of energy into this business, after six years, he had to declare bankruptcy.
Milton’s father, still pursuing the illusion of a quick buck, had headed west, trying to strike it rich in the Colorado Silver Rush. His father invited Milton to join him, which Milton did. But Milton had no desire to work in the silver mines, and yet he had no money to start his own business. So he did something he swore he would never do – he went to work for someone else.
Despite his early business failure, Milton Snavely still had ambitious dreams. But they never seemed to materialize. He took a job in New Orleans, but he soon realized that it wasn’t going to pan out. But he did manage to save a little bit of money and he headed to Chicago to open another store. It failed. So he moved to New York City and opened yet another business. Same story – it went bankrupt. He had opened businesses in three different cities, and failed each time
Milton Snavely, mentally exhausted and penniless, had to head back to his family in Pennsylvania, where he learned that his family had given up on him; his own relatives mocked him for being a "drifter" with no head for business. And yet, Milton refused to give up on his dreams.
You see, he viewed each failure as a learning opportunity, coming out stronger, wiser, and even more determined. He studied why things didn’t work and imagined how they could. Milton was able to secure a $1,500 loan from a former employee and started yet another company. He had been deeply impacted by his teenage apprenticeship with a candy maker, so at the age of 33, he started the Lancaster Caramel Company. And unlike anything else he had previously attempted, this company thrived, and within a few years employed over 1,300 employees and had annual sales of more than $1 million (nearly $40 million in today’s money.) Milton was enjoying the sweet success of caramel-infused wealth! And yet he did the unthinkable. He sold the company for the modern-day equivalent of $38 million and invested every penny into a new candy-making venture.
You see, a few years earlier he had visited the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he saw German chocolate-making machinery in action. Milton had an epiphany – if he coupled that chocolate-making equipment with the mass production techniques he used at his caramel factory, he could make chocolate affordable for the common person.
Let me reveal something: Snavely
was Milton’s middle name. His last name was Hershey. As in Milton Hershey.
At the time, chocolate was a rare, imported, European luxury item that most Americans had never tasted. After all, chocolate costs about 70 cents per pound at a time when unskilled workers were paid nine-cents an hour and blue-collar workers earned 13-cents an hour.
Milton Hershey didn’t want to make “luxury items" – he wanted to develop the Model-T of chocolate (the Ford Model-T made the automobile affordable to the masses.)
European chocolate makers used powdered milk, which was more expensive, because fresh milk spoiled too quickly. But through a lot of trial and error – and many, many failures – Hershey perfected a way to use fresh milk without it spoiling. This lowered his costs tremendously, as did his use of mass-production techniques. He essentially created a massive factory that used an assembly-line to make chocolate.
In 1900 the first Hershey Bar went on sale. Hershey’s lowered costs allowed them to sell each bar for a nickel (the equivalent of $1.90 today). That was about one-third of the price for other chocolate. While their profit margin on each candy bar was very slim, they focused on volume. Hershey didn’t merely undercut the competition – he literally redefined the market. The five-cent price put chocolate within reach of everyday people – not just the wealthy elite. (Interestingly, Milton Hershey was so committed to the five-cent selling price that the Hershey Bar remained a nickel until 1969! Instead of raising the price when the raw ingredients – milk, sugar, cocoa - increased, Hershey would simply make the candy bar smaller. When costs fell, he made the bar bigger.)
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about the Magi (Wisemen) and Epiphany. The Magi were pagan astrologers from a faraway country, and yet God led them to Jesus. Epiphany is about God’s revelation that Jesus came not just for the Jewish people, but for all people. As it says in Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people."
Think back to Milton Hershey’s childhood when he served as an apprentice for a newspaper publisher. One afternoon, his hat slipped off his head and fell into the massive printing press, causing major damage, and Milton was promptly fired. But what felt like disaster and failure at the time turned out to be a blessing in disguise. After all, his mother then hooked Milton up with a local candy-maker, which was a turn of events that truly altered the trajectory of his life.
Much of Milton Hershey’s life seemed at the time like failure and setbacks and wandering. But God doesn’t want those things to define us. Much like the Magi, Hershey didn’t find his calling by staying on the obvious path - but by being redirected.
For most people, chocolate was once considered distant and unattainable. But Milton Hershey believed it could be brought closer. In Epiphany, the Magi experienced a similar moment of discovery: what had been far away suddenly becomes near and tangible and available, regardless of our background or religious pedigree. The Magi’s off-the-beaten-path journey was one of faithfulness and obedience – and revelation. And it led to Jesus. For Milton Hershey, his journey was not what he would have scripted, but the struggles and challenges put him on a path that would lead to the right place. And how we love chocolate literally changed at the drop of a hat!
Friends, as icy weather approaches, I pray that each of you stays safe and warm. And always know that you are loved.
Joe
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