A battle plan for industrial war.
In 1937, workers in the prettiest company town in America sat down and stopped making chocolate. Five days later a mob of dairy farmers and “loyal” employees beat them out of the building with clubs and ice picks — and the newspapers ran pictures of the swimming pool.
“Unions kill America,” the story goes. Here's the documented record of who actually brought the violence — and the playbook that made it look like the strikers' fault.
What this page is about
Hershey, Pennsylvania was a company town — built, owned, and run by the chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, with the model homes, the pool, the golf course, and the amusement park to prove it. In April 1937, hundreds of Hershey Chocolate workers, many of them Italian immigrants stuck in the lowest-paid jobs, had just formed a union and staged a sit-down strike — occupying the plant and refusing to leave — over low pay and hard conditions.
It ended on April 7, not with a settlement but with a beating. A crowd of several thousand — “loyal” employees, local dairy farmers whose milk was spoiling by the hundreds of thousands of quarts, and paid strikebreakers — stormed the factory and drove the strikers out through a gauntlet of clubs and ice picks. Dozens were hurt. It is a near-perfect run of the era's most notorious union-busting script, the “Mohawk Valley Formula” — which the government itself called a battle plan for industrial war. This page grades the record and corrects the version going around.
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The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
A battle plan for industrial war.
In 1937, workers in America's prettiest company town sat down and stopped making chocolate. Five days later a mob of dairy farmers and 'loyal' employees beat them out with clubs and ice picks — and the papers ran pictures of the swimming pool.
The town, the strike, and the mob
Hershey was a company town its founder built and controlled.
FACTMilton Hershey built the town around his factory — housing, schools, the department store, the bank, the pool, the golf course, the amusement park — and ran it. It was designed as a model town, and it was also a place where the company set the terms of local life. Workers lived inside an economy their employer owned.
He built a second company town in Cuba — for cheap sugar — and an orphan school to work it.
FACTTo feed the chocolate factory cheap sugar, Hershey bought Cuban cane plantations and mills starting in 1916 and built a whole second company town, Central Hershey, modeled on the Pennsylvania one. He also founded an agricultural school for orphan boys — the first students were boys orphaned by a 1923 crash on his own Cuban railroad — training them for work on the farms and in the mills. The model traveled: wherever the sugar was cheapest, the company town and the trained-up labor followed.
The 'benevolent employer' image was a product Hershey manufactured — with his own paper and film crews.
FACTHershey is remembered as a kindly benefactor, and that reputation was no accident: he ran his own company newspaper, The Hershey Press, hired professional filmmakers to promote the town and factory, and openly treated 'benevolence' as the smart way to prevent labor unrest. Much of the era's flattering coverage traced back to Hershey's own promotional machine — which is why, when his town beat its strikers bloody, there was no national outcry to match. The good-guy story was, in part, bought and placed.
On April 2, 1937, more than 600 workers — many Italian immigrants — held a sit-down strike over low pay.
FACTAfter CIO organizers helped form a United Chocolate Workers local and won a minimum-wage bump in March 1937, Hershey laid off 'seasonal' workers — which union men read as retaliation. On the morning of April 2, local president Russell 'Bull' Behman waved a red handkerchief outside the plant and more than 600 workers sat down and stopped working, occupying the factory over low wages and hard conditions. A large share were Italian immigrants confined to the lowest-paid jobs. It was part of the great sit-down wave of 1936–37.
It ended on April 7 when a mob of loyalists, farmers, and paid strikebreakers beat the workers out with clubs and ice picks.
FACTWith 240,000 quarts of milk spoiling on the factory floor, local dairy farmers whose income depended on Hershey turned on the strike. On April 7, a crowd of several thousand — loyal employees, farmers, and paid strikebreakers — stormed the plant and drove the strikers out through a gauntlet, beating them with fists, clubs, improvised weapons, and ice picks. Dozens were injured; the union's local leaders and a CIO organizer were among the worst hurt.
The union-busting script had a name — the 'Mohawk Valley Formula' — and the government called it a battle plan for industrial war.
FACTThe tactics used against strikes like this were codified around 1936 by Remington Rand's president, James Rand Jr., during the Remington Rand strike. The 'Mohawk Valley Formula' called for discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, forming committees of 'loyal employees' and 'citizens' to swing local opinion, casting strikers as un-American, securing friendly press, and using police and vigilantes to break the strike. The National Labor Relations Board denounced it as 'a battle plan for industrial war.'
Hershey's crackdown ran that exact playbook — down to the pretty pictures in the press.
FACTEvery signature move is present in Hershey: a committee of 'loyal' workers and citizens organized the counter-rally; the strike was cast as a threat to the town's peace; a mob rather than the company did the violence; and the coverage paired riot photos with idyllic images of Hershey's model homes, pool, and amusement park — the tactic of drowning the labor story in scenery. Whether Hershey's managers consciously copied Rand's memo or not, the method is the method, and it worked.
What's proven, and what we corrected
- Who brought the violence is not in dispute. The strikers occupied the plant peacefully. The blood was drawn on April 7 by the crowd that came to remove them. That's the documented record, and it's the answer to “unions kill America.”
- We fixed the name. The strikebreaking plan is the “Mohawk Valley Formula,” written by Remington Rand's James Rand Jr. — not “James Remington,” as the viral version has it. Small fix, but we don't pass along errors.
- We dropped what we couldn't verify. The “Black Hand” slur, children singled out for beatings, and a specific fire-and-evict rule for side income are in the retelling but not in the sources we could check. The documented ethnic angle is real enough on its own: the strikers were largely Italian immigrants kept in the lowest-paid jobs.
- The workers ultimately won recognition. For all the violence, Hershey soon signed a union contract — one of the first major candy makers to do so. The beating delayed the outcome; it didn't stop it.
The violence was the product, not the accident
The point of the Mohawk Valley Formula is that the violence isn't a breakdown — it's the goal. You need a riot, because a riot is what lets you tell the public that striking is the dangerous, un-American thing, not the wage cut that caused it. Get your own loyalists and a friendly press to supply the pictures, and the company that started the fight comes out looking like the victim of it. That is a Corporate State story and a Looting the American Public one at once: the town owned the homes, the store, and the narrative.
It's the same machine we documented forty-three years earlier in The First Labor Day Came With Bayonets, where the Pullman company town cut wages but not rent, and the government broke the strike to protect commerce. Hershey is the private-sector version: no federal troops needed when you can turn your own neighbors into the militia. And the part that should sound familiar — the press running scenery to bury the story — is exactly the narrative-control problem the Who Controls What You Get to Know hub was built to track. “Fake news” is old; it just used to come with a swimming pool.
Questions worth taking seriously
Didn't the strikers cause the violence by occupying the plant?
A sit-down strike is occupation, not assault — the workers stopped working and stayed put. The physical violence on April 7 came from the crowd that stormed in to remove them, armed with clubs and ice picks. You can think sit-down strikes go too far and still see clearly who threw the punches.
Weren't the dairy farmers just protecting their own livelihoods?
Yes — and that is the genius of the formula. The company didn't need to send its own men; it let the strike squeeze a third party — farmers whose milk was spoiling — and pointed them at the workers. Turning neighbor against neighbor so the company's hands look clean is the tactic, not a side effect.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Wikipedia — Pennsylvania chocolate workers' strike, 1937
- History.com — Hershey's once violently suppressed a strike by chocolate workers
- ExplorePAHistory — Chocolate Workers' Sit-down Strike historical marker
- Hershey Community Archives — the strike and the company town
- Wikipedia — Mohawk Valley formula (James Rand Jr.; the NLRB's ‘battle plan for industrial war’)
- Hershey Community Archives — Central Hershey, Cuba (1916–1946) and the agricultural school for orphans
- Pennsylvania Heritage — the advertising genius of Milton S. Hershey (the PR machine)