hub for candy bars, and Milwaukee and Minneapolis were major producers. Most of the bars were made and sold regionally, not nationally, so a small manufacturer with a good bar could do well. The typical bar in the late teens cost five cents, and it weighed the same as today, about two ounces.

During World War, I the Army Quartermaster Corps, recognizing that chocolate boosted both energy and morale, got chocolate companies to contribute to the war effort by supplying chocolate in twenty-pound blocks. The blocks were cut down into individual pieces and hand-wrapped at quartermaster bases before being passed out to the doughboys. After the war thousands of soldiers returned home with a sweet tooth. Business grew bigger than ever, with some of the new bars, like the Legion’s Buddy, addressed specifically to the returning troops.

When Otto Schnering started making candy bars, in a back room over a Chicago plumbing shop in 1916, he perceived that a German name would not be an asset in wartime, so he named his firm the Curtiss Candy Company, after his mother’s family. He soon made himself one of the most successful and flamboyant businessmen in candy bars. In 1920, he introduced the Baby Ruth, named for the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, who as an infant had been the pet of the nation in the 1890s. In 1923, Schnering chartered a plane to fly over Pittsburgh and let loose thousands of Baby Ruths; each floated down into the city under a small, individual parachute. That stunt sealed the bar’s success. (Although the baseball player Babe Ruth probably had nothing to do with the name of the bar still commonly associated with him, he was the inspiration for a spate of bars in the late twenties. A George H. Ruth Candy Company was organized in Cleveland at the peak of his career, and bars with names like Bambino and Big Champ thrived for a brief while.)

George Williamson owned a candy store in downtown Chicago where, in 1920, a boy named Henry dropped by every day to flirt with the girls making candy. When Williamson cast around for a name for a new bar, one of his salesmen said, “All we hear around here is, ‘Oh, Henry,’ so why not call the new bar Oh Henry!?” Williamson agreed, and he publicized his bar by distributing a free Oh Henry! cookbook, with recipes for dishes like Oh Henry! Surprise Pie and Oh Henry! Stuffed Tomatoes (ingredients: two Oh Henry!s, three tomatoes, mayonnaise, lettuce, and salt). The book was so popular the company started charging for it.

Another candy-bar magnate, Frank Mars, made it big when he seized upon the possibilities that lay in a soft, fluffy nougat center discovered by accident by the Pendergast Candy Company, in Minneapolis. He copied it for his Milky Way bar, born in 1923, and then for others, including Snickers and the Mars Bar.

The first synthetic coating that

would stay hard in hot weather was invented in the 1930s by a Minneapolitan named Frank Martoccio. He had been a macaroni maker until one of his factory engines burned out; he found a replacement in a defunct candy factory and was talked into buying the whole plant, and before long he was one of the biggest candy moguls, offering brands like Zero and Milk Shake.

The Depression brought lean times to the candy-bar business, and not until the late 1930s did the industry begin to recover. When war struck again, the makers of candy bars once more were pressed into service supplying the troops. Hershey made “field ration D,” a refined chocolate that didn’t melt at high temperatures, and it was packed in kits for soldiers, sailors, and Marines. On the home front, as the supply of chocolate dwindled, manufacturers struggled to concoct new bars from ingredients such as peanuts and marshmallows and gave them patriotic names like Torpedo.

If World War I made candy bars a major industry, World War II made them a worldwide symbol of America. The GI handing out candy bars to children came to stand for liberation everywhere. Hershey bars became an international wartime currency for barter.

After the war candy bars became bigger business than ever. National brands began to predominate, with fewer companies commanding more and more of the market. The golden age of profuse and colorful local brands drew to a close. Foreign countries began for the first time to get into the act, making American-style candy bars of their own. Lately, some foreign manufacturers have even begun to market their products in the United States, either buying American companies or selling their native brands. Except in the area of pure chocolate, however, they haven’t made many inroads, and it will probably be a very long time before France’s La Nougat and Japan’s Lotte Ghana Black displace Baby Ruth and the 3 Musketeers in the hearts and on the candy racks of America.