Critical “Potash” Theory

One of Broadway’s hits in 1913 was Potash and Perlmutter, which ran for 441 performances at George M. Cohan’s Theatre. The title characters, Abe Potash and Morris Perlmutter, are partners in a wholesale women’s clothing business, mainly selling cloaks to department stores across the country from their headquarters on White Street in Tribeca. By the time of the play’s action, however, they have prospered and relocated their showroom to East Broadway.

The play was mainly the work of Montague Glass (1877–1934), who arrived in New York City at age fourteen from Manchester, England, and became a moderately successful attorney serving merchants in the garment industry. That world of petty tradesmen, comprising mainly Eastern European Jewish immigrants with a sprinkling of previously settled German Jews, was Glass’s Forest of Arden, or...