Welcome back to The Deep Dive. It's really great
to have you with us again. Yeah, good to be here.
Today, we are unpacking a story that you absolutely
think you know. It's a name, a brand you see
in every single checkout aisle, every gas station,
probably in your pantry right now. Oh, for sure.
But if you peel back that wrapper, and the pun
is absolutely intended, the story inside is so
much darker. and stranger and infinitely more
complex than just a chocolate bar. It really
is. I mean, this is a story about crushing repeated
failure. It's about a utopian social experiment
that, against all odds, actually worked. Right.
And it's about a man who fundamentally changed
the definition of corporate responsibility before
that was even a concept that business schools
taught. We are talking, of course, about Milton
S. Hershey. And the mission of this deep dive
is to look way, way past the candy. We're going
to explore how a man with a fourth grade education.
Fourth grade is wild. It's unbelievable how he
revolutionized an industry, narrowly escaped
sinking on the Titanic, and left behind this
multi -billion dollar legacy that, technically
speaking, exists primarily to support a single
school. And that structure? that relationship
between the company and the school, that is really
the North Star for this entire discussion. We're
going to be looking at a case study in what you
might call industrial philanthropy. Industrial
philanthropy. I like that. Yeah. And our sources
cover everything. We're looking at his early
struggles, his massive pivot from caramel to
chocolate, his... his contributions to World
War II, and then the legal intricacies of the
trust he established, which is a whole story
in itself. And I have to say, looking at the
research, one of the things I am most excited
to get into is the story of the Ration D Bar.
Ah, yes. This is a chocolate bar Hershey made
for the Army that was specifically designed to
taste, well, to taste it. Deliberately unappetizing.
Right. It is a brilliant, if slightly cruel,
bit of engineering psychology. And we will definitely
get into the why of that. I can't wait. But before
we get to the war and the billions, we have to
start at the bottom. I mean, we usually think
of these Gilded Age tycoons, your Rockefellers,
your Carnegies, as these, you know, ruthless
titans. Where does Hershey fit into that landscape?
Was he cut from the same cloth? That's the interesting
tension, right? He was absolutely a capitalist.
I mean, let's be clear. He wanted to dominate
the market. He was competitive. But his... His
software, if you will, was just programmed differently.
He was born September 13, 1857, in Derry Township,
Pennsylvania. His family was Mennonite, Swiss,
and German descent. Okay, so that's a big deal.
He's growing up in a community that values simplicity,
pacifism, community welfare. That has to shape
you. It's crucial. He grew up speaking Pennsylvania
Dutch. Right. And that background... It instilled
this very specific work ethic and maybe more
importantly, a sense of stewardship over wealth.
But it did not give him a head start in business.
Right. In fact, this is the underdog setup that
really frames his whole life. His education was
extremely limited. He stopped going to school
after the fourth grade. Let's just pause on that
for a second. Fourth grade, we are talking about
a guy who built a global empire and he essentially
never learned algebra or high school history
or physics. Nothing. He's done with school. In
1871, he's 14 years old, and his entry into the
workforce isn't exactly, you know, a rocket launch.
He was apprenticed to a local printer, a guy
named Sam Ernst, who ran a German -English newspaper.
A printer? That feels like a solid trade for
that era. Stable. How'd he do? He was terrible
at it. Just awful. He was clumsy, he hated the
work, he wasn't interested, and eventually he
got fired. Okay, so strike one. Fired from his
first real job. Precisely. So his family steps
in. His mother, Fanny, who was a really strong
influence his whole life, she suggests the candy
trade. She arranges for him to apprentice with
a confectioner, Joseph Royer, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
And he spends four years there. So he's learning
the ropes. Sugar, temperature, timing, all of
that. Exactly. He's learning the craft. And this
is what kicks off what I like to call his tour
of failures. Because once he finishes that apprenticeship,
he doesn't just settle down. He's got ambition.
In 1876, he moves to Philadelphia to start his
very first business. He's young. He's ready to
conquer the city. And Philadelphia in 1876, I
mean, that's the centennial exposition year.
The whole world is there. The city is booming.
It is. It's the place to be. But the business
fails, completely collapses. He just can't make
it work. And he packs up. He packs up. And this
is where his persistence starts to look, you
know, bordering on masochism. He goes to Denver.
Tries to work there, learn some things. Then
he goes to New Orleans, then Chicago. He's just
wandering across a country that's incredibly
economically volatile, looking for a foothold.
Wow. Then in 1883, he lands in New York City.
He gets some training at a place called Heiler's,
which was a massive name in candy at the time.
And he starts his second real business. New York
City. OK, this is the biggest stage there is.
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere,
right? He didn't make it there either. You're
kidding me. Nope. Initially, it does OK, but
it only lasts for three years. By 1886, that
business closes, too. He's out of money again.
So let's just recap here. He's been fired from
the printing gig. He failed in Philly during
this huge national celebration. He's failed in
New York City. He's traveled half the country,
presumably burning through whatever capital or
family loans he had. All of it. Most people would
have just gone back to the farm and said, you
know what? I tried. It's not for me. And that's
where the narrative usually ends for 99 % of
people. But there is a specific detail from his
time in Denver during that wandering phase that
is absolutely crucial. It is the technical aha
moment that eventually changes everything for
him. What happened in Denver? What was the secret?
While he was working for a confectioner there,
he learned a very specific technique, how to
make caramel using fresh milk. Fresh milk. Why
is that the secret sauce? I mean, that seems
almost obvious to us now. In the late 19th century,
it was not obvious at all. Most candies, especially
caramels, use things like paraffin. Yeah, basically
wax or. Other stabilizers to hold their shape
and texture. Using fresh milk was really, really
difficult. Milk spoils, it scorches, it's hard
to work with in large batches. It's temperamental.
Okay. But if you can get it right, it makes the
caramel so much creamier, it gives it a significantly
better shelf life, and the flavor profile is
just, it's completely different. It creates that
rich, dairy -forward taste that we associate
with good caramel today. So he filed that knowledge
away. Even though his own businesses were failing
left and right, he kept that technical insight
in his back pocket. Precisely. He knew he had
a superior product methodology. He just hadn't
found the right market or the right business
model to make it work. So, you know, battered
but not completely broken, he returns to Lancaster,
Pennsylvania in 1883. Back to where he started.
Full circle. Completely full circle. Yeah. And
he decides to try one more time. He starts the
Lancaster Caramel Company. And this, this is
where the tide finally turns. It does. And it
turns in a huge way. He applies that fresh milk
method he learned out in Denver. The product
is just strictly better than the competition.
It's softer. It's tastier. It lasts longer on
the shelf. And the company just explodes. How
big are we talking? By the early 1890s, he has
over 1 ,300 workers. Wow. He has two factories.
He is exporting caramels in bulk to England.
I mean, he is known literally as the Caramel
King. So he finally made it. He's wealthy. He's
successful. He employs a whole town's worth of
people. In any other biography, this is the happily
ever after. He could have just coasted on caramel
for the rest of his life. He could have. Absolutely.
And this is where we see the visionary part of
Hershey, or maybe just the restlessness in him.
In 1893, he takes a trip to Chicago for the World's
Columbian Exposition. The famous Chicago World's
Fair. This was the place where the Ferris wheel
debuted, where electricity was really showcased
for the first time on a mass scale. It was the
future on display. Right. And amidst all these
incredible wonders, you know, Tesla's AC current,
the moving walkways, Hershey finds this one exhibit
and becomes absolutely obsessed with it. It's
a display of German chocolate -making machinery.
Not the chocolate itself, but the machines. The
whole process. You have to understand, at that
time, chocolate was not a mass market snack.
It was a luxury good. It was largely dominated
by the Swiss. It was dark. It was kind of bitter.
And it was expensive. It was for the elite. Right.
But Hershey looks at this machinery and he sees
the potential. He thinks. I can do this better
and I can do it for everyone. He sees a democratization
of luxury. He wants to take this thing for the
rich and give it to the working person. He does.
And he reportedly made a comment that turned
out to be incredibly prophetic. He said, caramels
are just a fad, but chocolate is a permanent
thing. That is such a bold statement to make
when you are literally the caramel king. It's
unbelievably bold. And he puts his money where
his mouth is. In 1900, he does something that
absolutely shocked his peers. He sells the Lancaster
Caramel Company. He sells the Golden Goose. For
how much? For $1 million. Okay, we need to contextualize
that number. $1 million in the year 1900. It
is an astronomical amount of money. Yeah. In
today's purchasing power, especially if you think
about it in terms of industrial capital, you're
talking tens of millions, maybe even more. It's
forget about work for the rest of your life.
Money. But he doesn't retire to a beach somewhere.
Not even close. He takes that entire fortune
and bets it all on a brand new industry, mass
-produced milk chocolate. Yeah, it is a massive
pivot. It's like the CEO of a successful car
company suddenly selling everything to go all
in on, I don't know, hoverboards before the technology
is even really proven. It's a huge risk. And
he knows he needs to build a factory, but not
just any factory. He has to remember that lesson
from Denver. The fresh milk. The fresh milk.
That is his secret weapon. He needs vast, unbelievable
quantities of fresh milk to make his formula
work on a mass scale. So he can't just build
this in downtown Philadelphia or New York. He
needs to be where the cows are. Exactly. He has
to go to the source. So he buys a huge tract
of farmland, roughly 30 miles from Lancaster,
right near his birthplace in Derry Township.
Was that just nostalgia? I want to go home. I
think there was an element of that for sure.
But practically, it was a brilliant business
move. It was the center of dairy farmland in
Pennsylvania. He had direct, immediate access
to the single most important raw material he
needed. He essentially integrated his supply
chain before vertical integration was, you know,
a standard business school strategy. So he's
got the land, he's got the cows. What about the
chocolate itself? Is he just copying the Swiss?
No, he spends a lot of time perfecting his own
formula. He wasn't just trying to replicate what
was already out there. He wanted a specific taste
that could be mass produced, would remain stable
on the shelf for a long time, and would appeal
to the American palate. The first Hershey bar
is sold in 1900. And clearly people liked it.
They loved it. It was affordable luxury. For
a nickel, a factory worker could enjoy something
that just a few years earlier was reserved for
the upper class. And then he starts innovating.
Immediately. He innovates on the form factor.
In 1907, he introduces Hershey's Kisses. In 1908,
the Hershey bar with almonds. The business just
scales and scales. And as the factory gets bigger,
he needs more workers. A lot more workers. But
he's out in the middle of dairy country. There's
no housing. There's no infrastructure. There's
nothing there. So he has to build it all himself.
He has to build a town. And this brings us to
the utopia part of his vision. You have to understand,
in the late 19th and early 20th century, company
towns were not a new concept. But they had a
very, very bad reputation. Right. When I hear
company town, I'm thinking of coal mining towns
or the Pullman district in Chicago. Exactly.
Pullman is the classic example. George Pullman
built this whole town for his rail car workers.
But it was incredibly rigid. It was paternalistic
in a really controlling way. And ultimately,
it was exploitative. The whole I owe my soul
to the company store vibe. That's it. They paid
workers in script that was only good at the company
store. Rents were high even when wages were being
cut. It led to massive violent strikes. It was
not a happy place. So how did Hershey do it differently?
He took a radically different approach. He didn't
want a labor camp. He wanted a real community.
He had this core belief that workers who were
treated well, who lived in dignity, and who had
access to culture and leisure. would be better
workers and better citizens. Oh, what did he
build for them? What were the basics? He built
comfortable houses with indoor plumbing and electricity,
which were still luxuries for many at the time.
He built businesses, churches, a whole transportation
infrastructure with a trolley system to connect
the town. But then he went way, way beyond the
basics. I'm looking at the list of things he
built here, and it's kind of staggering. Hershey
Park. The Hotel Hershey. The Hershey Theater.
Hershey Gardens. It sounds like a resort, not
a factory town. It is. He built a full -blown
amusement park so his employees and their families
would have a place to picnic and relax. The theater
he built was so grand, it brought in Broadway
-level shows. In 1935, he established the M .S.
Hershey Foundation just to fund culture and education
for the residents of his town. It almost sounds
too good to be true. Was there a catch? Was this
just, you know, a clever way to keep unions out?
That's a fair question. And certainly happy workers
are less likely to unionize. And Hershey was
a businessman who wanted stability and no labor
trouble. But the sheer level of investment suggests
it was more than just a union -busting tactic.
I mean, get this. He transferred the land for
the Hershey Cemetery for $1. $1. $1. He wanted
his workers and their families to have a dignified
place to rest, even after they were gone. He
was building a complete life cycle community.
It's incredible. But the town, as impressive
as it is, isn't his biggest legacy. Not by a
long shot. We have to talk about the school.
And to talk about the school, we have to talk
about his wife, Kitty. Right. Catherine Kitty
Sweeney. He married her in 1898. And this was
a bit of a mismatch on paper, wasn't it? Oh,
absolutely. I mean, Hershey was this frugal,
pretty reserved Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite.
Kitty was an Irish -American Catholic from Jamestown,
New York. She was bubbly. She loved society.
She was vibrant. They were opposites in many
ways. But by all accounts, they were deeply,
deeply devoted to each other. But there was a
real tragedy in their marriage. There was. They
were never able to have children. And for a man
who is building an empire, having no heir is
a significant issue. It forces you to ask that
fundamental question. Who is all of this for?
But beyond the business implications, they just
genuinely wanted a family. And on top of that,
Kitty's health was always very frail. She suffered
from a debilitating illness, likely some sort
of neurological condition that just got worse
over time. She eventually died quite young in
1915. That's heartbreaking. So no children to
leave the fortune to. What did they decide to
do? Well, before she died in 1909, they made
a decision together that would define the company,
the town, everything forever. They signed a deed
of trust establishing the Hershey Industrial
School. And what was the original purpose of
the school? It was for local white orphan boys.
The idea was to give them a good home, a solid
education, and a trade they could use to build
a life. It started very small in the old homestead
where Hershey himself was born. So it was a nice
charitable project, a good thing to do. At first,
yes. But here's the so what moment that I think
just blows people's minds. In 1918, three years
after Kitty died, Milton Hershey, who is now
a widower with no direct heirs, he didn't just
donate some extra cash to the school. What did
he do? He transferred the majority of his personal
assets, including the controlling interest in
the Hershey Chocolate Company, to the Milton
Hershey School Trust. Wait, wait. I want to be
absolutely crystal clear on this. He gave the
company to the school. Effectively, yes. The
trust he created for the school holds the majority
of the voting shares of the Hershey Company.
That means the school, which is now called the
Milton Hershey School and is much more diverse,
controls the company. So let me get this straight.
When I buy a Reese's Cup or a Hershey bar today,
the profits... or at least the voting power behind
the company that's making it, are sitting with
a boarding school for underprivileged kids. Correct.
The dividends from those shares are what fund
the school. And the trust also controls 100 %
of the Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company.
So the hotel, the amusement park, the stadium,
it's all owned by the trust for the benefit of
the school. That is just wild. I mean, usually
you see billionaires setting up foundations that
do good work, but they keep the business control
completely separate. Or the foundation is just
a tax vehicle. He literally married the business
to the charity. And he did it while he was still
alive. This is key. He gave up control of his
fortune in 1918. He led until 1945. For nearly
30 years, he went to work every day for the company
that was effectively owned by the school he created.
And what's the scale of this school today? It's
immense. As of the data we have from 2016, the
school accommodates around 2 ,000 students from
pre -K through 12th grade. It provides them with
literally everything. Housing, a top -tier education,
clothing, medical and dental care, even college
scholarships. For free. Completely free for the
students and their families. It is, by a huge
margin, the richest private school in the world,
not because of tuition, but because of this massive
endowment from the chocolate company. Speaking
of medical care, there's another huge institution
in Hershey that came out of this, right? the
medical center. And this involves a really interesting
legal twist. This is a fascinating legal story.
So by the early 1960s, the chocolate company
had been so successful for so long that the trust
had accumulated an exorbitant amount of money.
A good problem to have. An amazing problem to
have. They actually couldn't spend it all just
on the school without being incredibly wasteful.
Help, we have too much money. A problem most
nonprofits would kill for. Right. But legally,
a trust has to follow the intent of the donor.
It can't just sit on cash. So the board went
to the Dauphin County Orphans Court, and they
invoked a legal doctrine called CIPRES. The CIPRES.
That sounds French. It is. It means as close
as possible. Basically, it's a rule that says
if a charitable trust can't fulfill its original,
very specific intent, maybe because it has too
much money or conditions have changed, the court
can allow them to use the money for a purpose
that is as close as possible to the original
intent of the donor. OK, so what did they argue
was as close as possible to an orphanage? They
argued that Milton Hershey's core intent was
to help people, especially children, in his community.
So they proposed a massive gift of $50 million
to Penn State University to build a world -class
teaching hospital and medical center. The catch.
Let me guess. It had to be built in Hershey.
It had to be built in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
A $50 million gift in 1963. That is a monumental
amount of money. It was one of the largest single
philanthropic gifts in American history at the
time. And that's how the Penn State Milton S.
Hershey Medical Center was born. It's this elite
teaching hospital in the middle of a relatively
small town, all because the chocolate money overflowed
the school's capacity to spend it. It really
speaks to the power of compound interest and
a successful business model when it's tied directly
to a philanthropic mission like that. It does.
It created this self -sustaining ecosystem of
wealth and community care that is still running
today. I want to pivot a little bit to some of
the historical intersections because Hershey's
life bumps up against some of the biggest events
of the 20th century. And the first one is a story
that just gives me chills every time I think
about it. The Titanic. It is one of those incredible
what if moments in history. So in 1912, Milton
and Kitty Hershey were in Europe. They were traveling.
Possibly looking for medical treatments for Kitty,
maybe just vacationing. They were booked to travel
back to the U .S. on the maiden voyage of the
RMS Titanic. They actually had the tickets. This
isn't just a rumor or a legend. No, they had
the tickets. In fact, the Hershey Story Museum
archives have a copy of the check Milton wrote
to the White Star Line. It was for the deposit
on a first -class stateroom. It is a physical
piece of evidence. So why didn't they get on
the boat? What happened? There's a common myth
that they canceled at the last minute because
Kitty suddenly fell ill. But the sources we have
indicate she had been ill for years. So that
wasn't a sudden change. The actual reason appears
to be much more mundane. Don't tell me it was
a scheduling conflict. It was basically a scheduling
conflict. Yeah. Business matters came up that
required Milton's attention back in Pennsylvania
earlier than they had planned. So just a simple,
boring business matter. Exactly. They canceled
their Titanic reservation and ended up taking
an earlier German liner, the SS America, instead.
The SS America? Wait, wasn't that ship? Wasn't
that one of the ships that sent one of the ice
warnings to the Titanic? It was. It's a very
chilling connection. But the butterfly effect
there is just staggering if he gets on that boat.
The whole story changes. The Chocolate Empire
might have crumbled or been sold off by executors.
The school, which was only three years old at
that point, might not have survived. let alone
grown to what it is today. The medical center
definitely wouldn't exist. Definitely not. Thousands
of children over the last century would have
had completely different lives. The town of Hershey
might just be another blip on the map in rural
Pennsylvania. It is terrifying to think about.
A simple business meeting altered the course
of history for thousands of people a century
later. But he did survive. And because he survived,
he was around for the next great global crisis,
World War II. Which brings us to the ration D
bar. You promised us the story of the bad -tasting
chocolate. I did, and this is such a great example
of Hershey's pragmatism meeting, you know, government
bureaucracy. Okay, set the scene for us. It's
the late 1930s. War is looming on the horizon.
The U .S. Army approaches Hershey with a problem.
They know chocolate is a high -energy food, and
they need a durable ration bar for the troops.
But they have very specific and, frankly, kind
of contradictory requirements. Okay, lay them
on me. Requirement number one. It has to weigh
one or two ounces. Simple enough. Requirement
number two. It has to resist melting at temperatures
higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Which makes
total sense. Troops would be fighting in the
Pacific, in North Africa. Standard chocolate
turns to soup at around 80 degrees. Exactly.
But here is requirement number three, the real
kicker. It had to have an unpleasant enough flavor
to prevent the troops from just snacking on them.
Wait, I need to wrap my head around this. They
went to the premier chocolate company in America
and asked them to make chocolate that people
wouldn't want to eat. Precisely. You have to
put yourself in the mindset of an army quartermaster.
These were emergency survival rations. They were
meant for a situation where you're cut off from
supply lines, maybe you're stranded behind enemy
lines. If the bar tasted like a delicious, creamy
Hershey bar, what would the soldiers do? They'd
eat it on day one as a treat. Of course they
would. And then when they were actually starving
three days later, they'd have nothing left. The
army needed to save the soldiers from themselves.
That is some dark, pragmatic logic. Make it grow
so it saves their life. It worked. Hershey's
chemists got to work on it. They developed this
new formula that used oat flour, sugar, cocoa
butter, skim milk powder, and some artificial
flavoring. It was dense. It was hard as a rock.
How hard are we talking? We're talking so hard
that the official instructions suggested it was
best to shave slices off it with a knife. Soldiers
reportedly hated it. They had nicknames for it,
like Hitler's secret weapon, because it was so
tough to chew. But did it do the job? Did it
meet the requirements? It did. Perfectly. It
provided 600 calories in a tiny, stable package.
It didn't melt in the jungle heat. And it kept
men alive in the worst possible conditions. How
many of these... brick flavored bars did they
end up making? The production numbers are just
staggering. In 1939, the plant could produce
about 100 ,000 bars a day. By the end of the
war, the Hershey plant in Pennsylvania was churning
out 24 million bars a week. 24 million a week?
The logistics of that alone are mind -boggling.
I mean, getting the cocoa, the sugar, the packaging,
all during wartime rationing. All told, it's
estimated they produced over three billion ration
D and tropical chocolate bars during the war.
Wait, hang on. What's the tropical chocolate
bar? Well, after a year or two of soldiers complaining
bitterly about the ration D, the army decided
they could be a little bit nicer. So in 1943,
they commissioned the tropical chocolate bar.
It was still designed to resist melting and tropical
heat, but it was formulated to taste somewhat
better than the ration D. That's a low bar to
clear, pun absolutely intended. A very low bar.
But Hershey's contribution wasn't just chocolate.
The factory's own machine shop, the guys who
normally maintain the chocolate rollers and wrapping
machines, was actually converted to make parts
for tanks and other military hardware. They made
gun mounts. They made parts for the Navy. It's
amazing to picture a chocolate factory making
tank parts. It really just shows the total mobilization
of the entire country for the war effort. It
really does. And for all of this, the company
received five Army -Navy -E production awards
for excellence in production. And Milton Hershey
was there for all of it. He was an old man by
then, but he saw his little caramel company transform
into a genuine war machine. He did. But as the
war was ending, so was his life. Yeah. Let's
talk about the end of that era. He lived a very,
very long life. He did. He died on October 13th,
1945. He was 88 years old. And fittingly, I think,
he died in the very hospital that he had helped
make possible. In Hershey, Pennsylvania, of course.
And he was buried in the Hershey Cemetery, the
one he built and gave the land for. right next
to his wife, Kitty, and his parents, who had
also been moved there. It's a very poetic end.
He is literally surrounded by the town and the
community that he built from scratch. And if
you go there today, there's a statue of him at
the Milton Hershey School. It's this bronze statue
of Milton with an orphan boy kind of wrapped
in his arms. Yeah. And the inscription is really
powerful. It says, His deeds are his monument.
His life is our inspiration. His deeds are his
monument. I like that a lot. He didn't build
a giant pyramid for himself. He built a school
and a town. And the recognition continued even
after his death. In 1995, the U .S. Postal Service
issued a stamp honoring him as a philanthropist.
And of course, every year on September 13th,
his birthday, people all over the world now celebrate
International Chocolate Day. So let's try to
bring this all together. We've covered the failures,
the chocolate revolution, the utopian town. The
Incredible Trust, Titanic, the World War II bars.
What does this all mean for us today? What's
the big takeaway? I think the key takeaway, the
thing that is so unique, is the structure he
left behind. You know, we live in this era of
massive wealth accumulation. We see billionaires
pledging to give their money away, which is great.
But Hershey didn't just pledge. He structurally
bound his wealth -generating engine, the company,
directly to his philanthropic mission, the school.
Right. It wasn't a one -time check. It was a
perpetual motion machine for charity. Exactly.
As long as people around the world eat chocolate,
the school is funded. And he did this while he
was still alive. He gave up control of his fortune
decades before he died. It really comes down
to that concept of enough. He reached a point
where he must have said to himself, I have enough.
I have more than I will ever need. Now what can
this wealth build for someone else? And that's
the provocative question, isn't it? In a world
where the goal is so often just endless growth
for the sake of shareholders, the Hershey model
is a fascinating anomaly. It asks us, what if
the ultimate shareholder was the community? What
if the profit motive was harnessed directly for
social good, not just as an afterthought or a
tax write -off? That is a powerful thought to
leave on. I guess next time you grab a Hershey
bar or a Kit Kat or Reese's, you can remember
you aren't just buying a snack. You're feeding
a trust that educates thousands of kids. And
you're validating the dream of a fourth grade
dropout who just refused to let failure stop
him. A pretty sweet legacy at the end of the
day. Thanks for listening to this deep dive.
We'll see you next time.