I published this piece on my Substack, Second Thoughts, but I like it so much I decided to post it on Vine Maple Farm also. I am fascinated that U.S. attitude toward the cold war of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s was very likely a reflection of the state of the candy industry in the 20th century. I discovered this when I researched a presentation I remembered from the fifth grade. We live in a fascinating world.
A candy conspiracy
Socialism, democratic socialism, and social democracy have been tossed around the last few days on the platforms I read regularly. On the 250th anniversary of the U.S.’s democratic government, we are re-examining our freedom of democratic choice over the relationship between government and the distribution and acquisition of wealth and power. Socialism has been a loaded term for a long time. It may seem fantastic, but this discussion has been heavily influenced by candy wars in the early 20th century.
In North Bellingham Elementary School in 1960, Mr. MacDonald, my fifth grade teacher, stood in front of our class next to an easel loaded with slick graphics that looked like PowerPoint slides 25 years before PowerPoint was invented. The packaged presentation, which circulated among classrooms in the Ferndale School District, gave us fifth-graders the low-down on the evils of Communism and the virtues of Capitalism with a side order promoting the domino theory that threw the U.S. into sad exploits in Southeast Asia when we fifth-graders registered for the draft. Separating socialist economics and authoritarian Soviet-style communism was far beyond Mr. MacDonald’s presentation.
Mr. MacDonald and the Ferndale School District board, which must have sanctioned the presentation, were well-intentioned, probably not well-informed, and likely the victims of a movement upholding the grotesque anti-communist McCarthy hearings a few years earlier. I won’t say explicitly that the John Birch Society’s hand was in the presentation, but I believe it.
The John Birch Society’s founder was a candy magnate, Robert Welch, the mastermind behind Junior Mints and Sugar Daddies, and veteran of cut-throat and conspiratorial candy wars.
Candy brands and packaging art can be legally protected, but ingredients, recipes, and processes, which are the real treasures of the industry, are free to steal without legal penalties. Candy factories, like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, are secretive fortresses against industrial espionage. The struggles of these intrigue-wrapped bastions mirrored Welch’s vision of the cold war against world communism and inspired the thought behind Mr. MacDonald’s presentation.
North Bellingham Elementary School is in a remote corner of the nation and national communications did not penetrate as deeply sixty years ago as they do today. In my fifth-grade days, only the loudest ALL CAPs, candy war-inspired voices made it all the way to the Nooksack River plain.
Amazing that we’ve made it this far.