From Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars by Elizabeth Ewen:
Anna Kuthan…during World War I she had worked as a domestic servant in the home of a wealthy woman in Vienna where one of her responsibilities had been to pick up the Red Cross packages sent from America. She was impressed with the packaging of Hecker’s flour, Nestle’s cocoa, and Carnation evaporated milk: “I saved all the labels, even from the Hecker’s flour. I says, oh my God, they must have everything so good if they pack up everything so good. If I could only come to this country.” Although she was allowed to save the labels, she was not allowed to taste any of the products:
“The lady locked everything up. I wanted to get a taste of the sweet condensed milk. One day she forgot to lock it up. She went into the bathroom. You know what I did? I just put the can in my mouth. And one, two, three, she opened the door. I says it’s inside already, you can’t get it out of me. I got a taste of it. I never forget it.”
When Anna Kuthan came to the United States right after the war, this experience of denial and theft was constantly in her mind:
“When I came to this country, the first thing I see is those big stores, I said there is the Hecker’s flour…there is the condensed milk! When I was married…one day I was shopping and I came home crying; he says what happened to you. All the things I bought in the stores, what I got in Vienna and I could only dream about, not even taste it. And here I see it on the shelf. I bought everything and I’m gonna go there every day and I’m gonna buy it.”
