Milton Hershey built a town for his workers, attempting to cater to their material and spiritual needs, including entertainment and education.
This degree of control and entanglement with their personal lives meant that many hiring and firing decisions were made based on individual relationships and favoritism.
The leaflet aired grievances over low wages, erratic work schedules and recent orders to speed up production.
[3]: 208–209 It insisted that chocolate workers did perform physically demanding labor, with deafening levels of noise and temperatures over 100 degrees.
On April 2, 1937 at eleven in the morning, union president Russell "Bull" Behman waved a red handkerchief outside the Hershey chocolate factory and signaled the strike was on.
Food would be supplied by a union kitchen, surveillance cameras would make sure Hershey's property was not damaged, and smoking was banned in sanitary areas of the factory.
On Monday, April 5, the fourth day of the strike, dairy farmers met with strikers to discuss lost milk sales.
On the evening of April 6, 1937, several thousand loyal workers and farmers marched through Palmyra in support of the Hershey Chocolate Corporation.
Seemingly averting violence, it is unclear why men from the rally spontaneously grabbed bats, billy clubs, and hammers and ran to the factory.
[3]: 218 Dozens were injured, and the three leading union organizers, Behman, Loy, and a CIO man named Miles Sweeney were severely beaten.
[8] In the days after the strike, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) investigated the Hershey company and required that they hold a union election.
The chocolate workers’ new contract under the AFL gave them an increase in overtime rates, paid vacations, and a procedure for arbitrating grievances.
[9] The Hershey strikers were organizing around the same time as the famous strike at the General Motors Corporation in Flint, Michigan, although it did not gain the same momentum.