Milton Hershey: The Perception Of Success

Merriam-Webster defines the word success as “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect or fame.” The definition of success differs from one person to another. Most people work hard throughout their life to achieve goals and be successful in their careers. That might mean acquiring a secondary education, being able to provide for one’s family, achieving a life’s ambition, or acquiring wealth. However, to a homeless man living in a busy city of New York, success might simply mean attaining enough cash to purchase a small meal. Success through the eyes of a United States Marine may be avoiding death in order to see one’s family. Perceptions of success can be faulty. In most cases, one can be successful in one part of life and be a total
By 1867, Hershey’s father “had largely cut himself out of the family picture” (Milton). Following an incomplete rural school education, he was apprenticed at the age of fifteen but was fired shortly after. Four years later, Hershey borrowed one hundred and fifty dollars from a gracious aunt to set up his own shop in the heart of Philadelphia. For five long years Hershey put everything he had into the business. But success eluded him, he finally closed shop and headed west to reunite with his father. With his father, Hershey found work with a confectioner. But the entrepreneur in Hershey was not content to work for someone else, and he then struck out on his own again. First in Chicago and later in New York City, but in both cases he failed again (Milton). Then in 1883, he returned to Lancaster and still convinced that he could construct a successful candy company, started the Lancaster Carmel Company. Within a few short years Hershey had a successful and thriving business. But when Hershey got an up-close look at the art of chocolate making he was immediately hooked. “The fascination quickly became focused on milk chocolate, considered a delicacy” (Milton), but was largely dominated by the Swiss. In 1900, Hershey sold the Lancaster Caramel Company for a staggering one million dollars and started a new company. Quickly, the Hershey Chocolate Company surpassed the founder’s previous venture.
Bill Gates is now one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, but he did not earn his fortune in a straight line to success. Before launching Microsoft, Bill Gates was a Harvard University dropout. Gates entered the entrepreneurial scene with a company called Traf-O-Data, which aimed to process and analyze data from traffic tapes in Seattle. Although when he attempted to sell the idea alongside his business partner, Paul Allen. The product barley worked, it was a complete disaster. Nevertheless, Gates prevailed through his failure driven by his passion for computer programming. Microsoft went public in 1986, “Gates amassed a huge paper fortune as the company’s largest individual shareholder. He became a paper billionaire in 1986” according to editors of Britannica