Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (30 page)

Hershey delighted in mulling over the plans with his architect. He knew what he wanted. If money could buy beauty and grandeur, then he would have it. The factory—the humming hub of the enterprise—would look palatial with elegant limestone buildings set back from Chocolate Avenue by a sweeping lawn the size of a football field. It would make Cadbury’s little cottage factory in the country, in those few green fields known as England, look a little out of date, a little last century by comparison. The town would also be built on a Hershey scale. The ambitious design boasted two main thoroughfares, Chocolate Avenue and Cocoa Avenue, intersected by streets named after exotic locations where Hershey bought cocoa: Areba, Trinidad, Caracas, Java, Para, Granada. . . . Like Bournville, the charming homes would have gardens and be built to differing designs set well back from rows of maple trees that lined the streets. He planned shops, a library, an athletic ground with a grandstand, and a 150-acre park of landscaped grounds with an enormous pavilion for skating and dancing. The world would come just to look.

It was a vision that put the spotlight on Hershey in a new debate about what the fulfillment of the American dream was all about. This was the age of the gilded millionaires: railroad tycoons like Vanderbilt, oil kings such as Rockefeller, meatpacking magnates such as Gustavus Swift and Philip Armour, or William Clark in mining. The sale of Andrew Carnegie’s steel company for $200 million in 1901 almost certainly made him the richest man in the world. Wealth on this scale was unprecedented. Newspapers and magazines lapped up stories of the lifestyles of the new millionaires, prompting a moral debate: Was it right for the fortunate few to possess such staggering wealth while millions faced unimaginable poverty? Was this the embodiment of the American dream or a grotesque distortion of it?

John Davison Rockefeller, who was made rich beyond imagining as Standard Oil’s kerosene became “the Light of the World,” conveniently accepted Calvinist thinking on the matter. Success was his due; it reflected God’s will. “God gave me my money,” he said. He struck an increasingly controversial figure, caricatured in the press as an industrial emperor and accused of monopolistic practices. But he also gave money to charity and was building a reputation for philanthropy. In the 1890s, he helped to transform the University of Chicago with a donation of $80 million, and in 1901, he founded New York’s Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which later became Rockefeller University.

Andrew Carnegie spelled out an entire theory of philanthropy. In 1889, he published “Wealth,” the first in a series of articles for the
North American Review
, in which he set out his view that the rich had a moral obligation to look after the poor. “The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the labourer . . . today measures the changes which have come with civilisation,” he wrote. He contrasted this with older cultures, such as the native Sioux. The wigwam of a Sioux chief, the most senior person in an Indian village, differed very little from the tents of his poorest braves. Carnegie tried to explain how these changes came about in almost Darwinian terms. There was a “law of competition” in the continuing economic struggle as wealth is accumulated in the hands of the capable few. But such laws also served a moral purpose: It was the responsibility of the rich man to give his fortune away. The same effort that had gone into making the millions should be spent on distributing it to benefit the community. Needless to say, his article sparked a furor, with other captains of industry refusing to fall in line with his views.

Ironically, despite Carnegie’s professed views on wealth, he failed to put an end to the horrific working conditions in his own steel mills but rather used his theories to justify them. It was his duty, he said—especially if he was going to give his money away—to make his business as profitable as possible. With this in mind, his managers cut wages, increased hours, and ran the mills with ruthless efficiency. According to
Cosmopolitan
in 1903, inside his mills “were pits like
the gaping mouth of hell, and ovens emitting a terrible degree of heat. . . . The injuries sustained are of a frightful character.” Carnegie continued to preach his “Gospel of Wealth” in speeches, and his series of essays was reprinted, but his views were not always appreciated. A theologian at Dartmouth College, William Jewitt Tucker, was appalled at the patronizing idea that millionaires were the best equipped to dispense the wealth they had made from the labor of others. “I can conceive of no greater mistake, more disastrous in the end to religion if not to society,” he wrote, “than of trying to make charity do the work of justice.”

Milton Hershey’s grand scheme would show them all. He would build the perfect American dream. His workers would benefit from the beautiful surroundings of his model town at Hershey, and his chocolate works would offer every conceivable modern comfort. His staff would be among America’s working elite. As the walls of his factory began to rise from empty cornfields in 1903 and 1904, the trim figure of Milton Hershey could be seen everywhere trekking through the mud and the dirt. With each day his utopia became more tangible and real. How could it be other than good?

But the would-be chocolate king was in trouble. Hidden from view in the research department, his struggle to create a milk chocolate recipe was intensifying. Hershey’s headquarters for chocolate research was concealed in a test plant behind his old family home near Derry Church. Apart from a Jersey herd, the facility had its own dairy, milk-processing plant, and large warehouse filled with kettles and vacuum pans for testing different chocolate mixtures. The grounds were patrolled by security each night to ensure there were no intruders. Absolute secrecy was essential to guard the humiliating fact that there was little to guard. Success was elusive, but the world must not know.

Like the Swiss before him, Hershey wrestled with the problems of milk processing. Experiments with cream and whole milk failed, so he turned his attention to skimmed milk. The key was to find a way to evaporate the water from the milk in such a way that it could be smoothly mixed with the sugar and cocoa fats. After heating the milk, its flavor almost invariably became poor, burned, or scalded. If the milk managed to condense successfully, it could turn lumpy when
mixed with the chocolate ingredients as the cocoa oils mixed with water in milk. Even if the testers succeeded in making a chocolate bar, it could turn rancid. And then there were the potential pitfalls associated with scaling up production. How would they handle the daily input from the milk of 15,000 cows? Could they expand milk processing for mass production? How could they prevent a large batch from spoiling?

With Hershey generous but mercurial, kindhearted but always on a short fuse—shortened still further with worry—his small staff was uneasy. They commonly worked through the night; impromptu sleeping arrangements were set up in the barn so an experiment could be watched through the small hours. While their boss’s benevolence was beyond doubt, they knew that just one tiny slipup could be cause for instant dismissal.

There are slightly differing accounts of Hershey’s breakthrough. The heroic version has Hershey working late one night with John Schmalbach, a colleague from his caramel factory. After several hours of laborious failures, Schmalbach seized the initiative and tried a very slow evaporation of nonfat milk over low heat. He succeeded in reducing the water content of the milk and added the sugar to create a sweet, creamy concoction with no hint of a burned flavor. Better still, they found the mixture could be blended with the ingredients from the cocoa bean without spoiling to produce a smooth milk chocolate. Hershey was thrilled. In his view, the faintly bitter flavor could not be bettered. When the experiment was repeated with the exact same temperatures and timing, it worked again. Slightly sour, distinctly original: the perfect American milk chocolate bar.

According to a more cynical view, the origins of the Hershey’s milk chocolate bar are less romantic. Hershey happened to acquire a large batch of milk powder from Europe, which had slightly soured by the time it crossed the Atlantic. Reluctant to waste such a large amount, he used it to make chocolate and found that it sold well. Company officials have always denied that soured milk powder played any part in the breakthrough formula.

Whatever really happened that led to that distinctive Hershey taste, mass production was the next step. With his factory almost
complete, Milton Hershey was poised to become the Ford of chocolate. Ironically, the one person who would have particularly treasured this moment was missing: Milton’s father, Henry Hershey. The man who always advocated going for the grand scale, died in February 1904 as the elusive American dream was finally being created all around him. He had a heart attack in the unpaved streets of the half-built town.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Hershey’s struggles were mirrored by those of twenty-six-year-old George Cadbury Jr. at Bournville. The Swiss, the Dutch, and even their old rival Fry had launched a milk chocolate bar, Fry’s Five Boys Milk Chocolate. The Rowntrees, in an attempt to cash in on Swiss success, launched a Swiss Milk Chocolate followed by their Alpine Milk Chocolate and Mountain Milk Chocolate. Although both Rowntree’s and Fry’s milk chocolate products were still based on milk powder and lacked the quality of the Swiss producers, it was surely only a matter of time before they caught up.

The Cadburys had wrestled with the problem of milk chocolate for fifteen years and failed to find a breakthrough recipe. After a research trip to Switzerland, George Jr. had tried to release an improved milk chocolate bar in 1902 using condensed milk rather than powdered milk, but it fared no better than the previous attempts. Refusing to surrender the challenge, George and his team eventually stumbled on a discovery. They discovered a milk chocolate bar from Switzerland with a unique taste and texture: It was rich and creamy, like chocolate velvet. Tests confirmed that this bar—made on a small scale by the venerable Swiss family firm of Cailler—contained a higher percentage of milk mixed with the chocolate ingredients than Daniel Peter used to make his bars. For George Jr., it pointed the way forward.

Each day, George Jr. drove his Lanchester to Bournville and walked up the steps to the modest room that passed as a chemists’ laboratory. The challenge seemed insurmountable: to create and mass-produce a bar that was even milkier and creamier than the competition. He was joined by Booth the chemist; a confectioner, Otto Unger; an engineer, Louis Barrow; and a foreman, Harry Palmer. He and his small team busied themselves measuring, titrating, and boiling the different mixtures. George was so caught up in the process that it is said that one night, sleepwalking and delirious, he “rose in the small hours and trundled his young wife, Edith, around the bedroom under the impression that she was a milk churn!”

Late in 1904, an exhausted George Jr. and his team hit on the exact combination of temperature, pressure, and cooling to condense the milk in such a way that large volumes of milk could be mixed with the cocoa without spoiling. It was indeed a recipe that was creamier and sweeter than Peter’s chocolate; rich and very satisfying. Each half-pound bar contained a glass and a half of full-cream milk. George thought it good enough to take to the Cadbury board.

Samples were duly handed around. The principal members of the board were George’s older brother, Edward, his cousins, Barrow and William, and his father, George Sr. In solemn silence the bite-sized chunks were chewed, pen and paper at the ready to note any flaws with exacting criticism if disappointed. The seriousness of the occasion was born of so many equally hopeful but abortive trials. Why should this be different? Slowly tongue and taste were wrapped around each other. Five gravely sober faces softened, then showed surprise and then excitement. Another small piece of chocolate confirmed what taste buds knew as tongues licked lips and fingers. This was like Swiss chocolate—no, better! This could be launched on the market with confidence.

The date was set for 1905—the only question was volume. The Swiss were selling thirty tons of milk chocolate a week in Britain. Would the public prefer their product over the Swiss chocolate? The board was inclined to be cautious and suggested they create capacity for five tons of George Jr.’s new chocolate a week. Even this figure
seemed optimistic, they reasoned, since it grossly exceeded consumption of any of their milk chocolate bars to date. George Jr. had a different plan. He wanted Bournville geared to twenty tons a week. His idea was to launch in a big way before other firms could copy them.

After some debate, he won the backing of the board. Word of the new and wonderful chocolate spread around the company. The sales team decided to promote the milk content by calling the new bar Dairy Maid. Just six weeks before launch, there was a change of plan. According to the
Bournville Works
magazine, the winning idea came by chance from a Plymouth confectionery shop. The daughter of the shopowners happened to be enjoying a bar of Swiss milk chocolate just as a Cadbury salesman paid a visit. He could not resist telling her about the luxurious new milk chocolate they were bringing out “that will sweep the country—Cadbury’s Dairy Maid.” The young girl replied, “I wonder you don’t call it Dairy Milk; it’s a much daintier name.” Six weeks later she received a complimentary slab of milk chocolate with the name she had proposed emblazoned across the wrapping: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.