The Rise of the Italian mafia
How the events of Prohibition sparked the rise of the Mafia, and the corporate transformation of crime.
A site by Elias Schwartz
Contextual Explication
Starting in the early 1900s, Italian immigrants made their way across the Atlantic to the United States and into cities and neighborhoods all along the east coast. Low-income Italian families were without jobs, and many without a proper education to make their way out of the pervasive poverty of that population. Yet in the year 1920, with the abolishment of alcohol, and the implementation of Prohibition across the nation, came the rise of organized crime, and with that, a strong group of Italian mobsters. With the opportunity to completely take over and own the business of the illegal sale of alcohol, many italian immigrants dropped out of school, left their jobs, and began their work for La Cosa Nostra - also known as “Our thing.” |
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. - Al Capone
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The most infamous of those mobsters was Brooklyn native, Alphonse Capone, who moved to Chicago in 1919, and changed the city forever. Following the peak of Capone’s reign in the 1930s, the relationships between the mafia and banks, politicians, and union workers set a new standard for what organized crime in the United States would become. The city of Chicago would forever be stained with the political corruption, and economic terrorization caused by the mafia during this time. While many believe that today’s world is without the same corruption and inequity that the nation witnessed 75 years ago, white collar crime is still omnipresent in political offices, labor unions, and international banks today.
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