He Left It to the Boys

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a school bell, distant, and a factory whistle answering it)
Nineteen eighteen. He told almost nobody. That's the part.

[Verse 1]
He failed twice at candy before the caramel took,
Philadelphia, then Chicago, then home to Pennsylvania,
and when the chocolate finally worked he did the strangest thing —
he did not move away. He built a town around the plant.
Houses, a trolley, a park, a bank, a school,
for the men who did the mixing. That is not a normal act.

[Chorus]
He left it to the boys. The whole of it. Every share.
Nineteen eighteen, in a deed, and he asked them not to say.
Milton Hershey had no children and his wife had died,
so he took his entire fortune and he signed it to a school
for orphan boys, and told the papers nothing at all.
They found out years later. He left it to the boys.

[Verse 2]
And the trust still owns the company. Not a figure of speech —
the school he built for orphans holds the controlling stake,
so every bar sold anywhere on any day this year
pays into a children's home in Derry Township, still.
He kept building through the Depression, on purpose, to keep
men in work when there was none. A hotel nobody needed.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And this is the one on this record that goes the other way.
Every other name here got taken, worn down, or lost —
Chevrolet on the shop floor, Mercédès with nothing,
the initials nobody unpacks, the faces nobody names.
He gave his away on purpose, while he was alive, and then
he lived another twenty-seven years and never took it back.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the school bell, closer now)
He left it to the boys.
It's still theirs. Go and look it up. It's still theirs.