Chocolate entrepreneur, Milton Hershey (1857-1945) and his wife, Catherine (1871-1915) set up the Hershey Industrial School in Hershey, Pennsylvania during 1909.

The Hershey Industrial School began with just 4 orphaned boys as students in 1910. In 1915, there were about 60 boys, with the numbers increasing to over a 1000 boys in 1937.

With changes over the years, the school now takes in children from low-income families.

In this 2021 article by Bob Fernandez and Charlotte Keith, a claim is being made that the Milton Hershey School could do more to help poor children.

They say:
“Hershey’s fortune, which funds the school, has ballooned to be larger than that of the Ford Foundation. But the school has faced persistent criticism for helping only a fraction of the vulnerable children it could reach with its vast wealth. New questions have arisen over its spending after a former board chair sued in early April for access to financial documents he says he’s been denied for more than a year.”

The authors report John Kinnaird, a 1949 graduate, as saying that Milton Hershey – whom he spent time with as a student – would have wanted his money to help more children.

In 2020, apparently, the school spent $90,000 per year on each student, but still had $1billion left over.