The early history of the play in the United States is furnished in part by Upton Sinclair, whose novel based on Damaged Goods appeared in 1913. The play was presented for the first time in the same year, at a Friday matinee on March 14, in the Fulton Theater in New York, evidently a private showing before members of a group called the Sociological Fund. It had been produced by Richard Bennett, the actor, as we are told by M. Moore:

“Not as one more play but as the major enterprise of his whole career. ...He was almost beaten at first by the hostility of censormanagers; and by the fear of actors who ''as fast as he gathered them, just as fast did they stray from the fold when their friends began to tell them that every actor who took part in the production would be ostracized from polite society." When he had succeeded in getting a company together, he found it necessary to present the play first under the auspices of the Medical Review of Reviews, and persons who wished to see the play bought special memberships in a fund society instead of simply purchasing tickets of admittance.”

In spite of these difficulties, the play was a huge success in New York. Sinclair says it was "acclaimed by public, press, and pulpit as the greatest contribution ever made by the stage to the cause of humanity." It had a long run in New York and then toured other cities, according to Moore, "besides bearing fruit in several state laws for the protection of public health." The play was revived in New York at the 48th Street Theater in 1937 and at the Butler Davenport Theater in 1941.