Mafia$$$
Organized crime breaks into bagel and banking business
(Editor's note: This is the first in a series of two articles concerning the history of the Mafia and its involvement in legitimate business.)
By THOMAS CORPORA
UPI Staff Writer
NEW YORK — Eat a bagel for breakfast, go to a night club to hear your favorite singer, buy a hot dog at the corner stand, join a union, buy a package of cigarettes from a machine, build a house, invest in the stock market or start a bank account for your child's future and you may be helping to support organized crime.
The Mafia, Cosa Nostra, The Syndicate—they are all the same thing—is involved in all these legitimate businesses and more. Gone are the days when criminal gangs engaged only in rackets like narcotics, gambling, prostitution, hijacking or extortion.
The big shots of crime may sit as directors of a bank today. They may be union officials. They may be owners of construction companies or trucking firms. Their influence may reach into the city council of your city, or into the state legislature.
Some officials fear that if the influence of the Mafia continues to grow—and there is little reason to doubt that under present laws it won't—organized crime could someday reach into the highest levels of Washington.
Alarming? Yes. Alarmist? No.
The history of the Mafia in the United States shows a virtually unbroken record of growth. "Business reverses" have been few and there has never been a depression. Old "executives" have been jailed, deported and killed and there has always been a supply of young blood to move into their places.
Kiss of death
Frankly, little is really known about the Mafia and its operations. Occasionally, a leader or an underling is brought to trial, but rarely will he talk. What is known comes from a handful of police experts who have made the Mafia their life's work, and informers, the most famous and most revealing of whom was Joseph Valachi, the Cosa Nostra "soldier" who decided to sing after the late Vito Genovese gave him the two-cheek "kiss of death" in a cell at the Atlanta Federal Prison.
Valachi identified more than 300 members of the Mafia and said there were about 5,000 in the criminal organization throughout the United States. Other estimates are greater.
The Mafia originated in Sicily where it was known as the "Honorable Society." It came to the United States with the great immigrations of Italians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has never been known here as the honorable society.
At first, Mafiosi preyed on their own people, using strong arm methods to extort money from laborers or to force small businessmen to pay for "protection." They went wherever the Italian community went. In New Orleans, the Mafia controlled hiring on the docks. In Hillsville, Pa., armed Mafiosi waited at the pay windows of mining companies to collect their fees from the workers.
Gang warfare
It was small in those days but then came prohibition and with it, bootlegging, which gave the Mafia the big money it needed to move into rackets outside the Italian communities. It did not do so without bloodshed.
2 KANSAN Mar. 26 1969
Jewish and Irish gangs already controlled some rackets. Where it could, the Mafia made alliances with these ethnic gangs, like the Dutch Schultz gang, or with Longie Zwillman or Buggsy Siegel. In other cases, gang warfare was the result of Mafia expansion. Between 1920 and 1930, 800 persons were killed in these wars, according to Valachi.
By 1932, Charles Lucania "Lucky" Luciano had organized the Mafia- and syndicated
crime-in New York City into five gangs or "families," which still control things here. Outside New York, territory was assigned to other top gangsters.
The move into legitimate business did not take hold until after the war. True, the gangs had always operated legitimate fronts like night clubs and bars, warehouses, vending machine companies or trucking firms.
In 1946, Vito Genovese, who, with Luciano, was "boss of the bosses," had just been returned to the United States from Italy, where he had fled in the 1930s to escape a murder charge. The charge was dropped when the star witness died of poisoning while in police custody.
Don Vitone, as he was called by underlings, gave the order for Cosa Nostra (our thing), to move into legitimate business.
Luciano was in prison then and soon to be deported, and
That was 23 years ago. Without giving up any of its illegal enterprises, with the possible exception of narcotics,
the Mafia moved into dozens of different areas in the world of legitimate business. Some authorities say the Mafia decided narcotics were too hot to handle and others say it could not resist the high profits despite the heat.
Tomorrow: the new image
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