The trouble with the candy industry is that anyone can go into business with a few pounds of sugar and a kettle. Before the War candy was primarily for children. War made the armies crave the quick-burning carbohydrates of candy which their governments did not supply. After the War candy became a $400,000,000 industry, with only 47 others ahead of it in size and importance. Last week the National Confectioners Association, reshuffled by Depression and reunited by an NRA code, met in convention in Manhattan and announced that candy sales for 1934's first four months were 28% better than in 1933. U. S. citizens were again eating an average of a pound of candy apiece every month. Candyman William F. Heide gloated, "The time when people were content to get beefsteak and potatoes has definitely come to an end."
Candy is not as simple as beefsteak & potatoes. It comes in fancy trademarked packages, in plain packages, by the pound, by the piece and, most important of all, by the bar. It is sold from dusty bins in crossroads general stores, across immaculate counters in swank city candy shops, by slot machines, by drug stores, by department stores, by grocery stores, by stationery stores, by restaurants, by hot-dog stands, by newsstands, by filling stations, even by blacksmith shops. For these retail outlets some 1,000 wholesale candy makers, of which hardly 400 are national, scrabble endlessly, hope their products will not ferment or go stale on the shelves, take them back if they do.
Head man of the candy industry does not consider himself a candy man at all. But over 60% of Milton Snavely Hershey's business is milk chocolate bars, though he has not advertised his products since 1909. In Hershey. Pa., the air is sweet for miles around, most of the profits (1933: $4,246,000) go to the Hershey Industrial School, and 76-year-old Mr. Hershey lives alone in two rooms at the country club. Through Depression he has quietly fattened his bars.