 His parents, Solomon and Fannie Kase, emigrated from Austria to New York in the late 1880s.At the time of the 1900 United States Census, Kase was living on Willett Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his parents and six siblings – Moses (born 1884 in Austria), Annie (born 1889 in New York), Benjamin (born 1891 in New York), Lena (born 1895 in New York), and twins Fannie and Rachel (born 1900 in New York).At that time, Kase's father was working as "cloak operator"—that is, a sewing machine operator working on ladies cloaks.