Wouldn't other mobsters be offended by rule breaking/changing? After all if the boss can break rules, whats to stop the average soldier?
That happened in the Fifties, but it wasn't a matter of Mafia "rules" or "honor"--it was cold-cash greed:
John Scalise had been close to Salvatore Maranzano. After Maranzano's victory in the Castellemmarese War of 1930-31, he made Scalise a caporegime--in effect the boss of what later became the Gambino family. After Charlie Luciano arranged Maranzano's murder, he removed Scalise and replaced him with Vincent Mangano. But Scalise survived as one of Mangano's capos.
Albert Anastasia got rid of Mangano in 1951. He retained Scalise. But in 1957, Anastasia found out that Scalise had been selling memberships in the Mafia for $50k each. The offense was less that he was breaking "rules," more that he wasn't sharing the proceeds with his boss, and that if he'd been permited to continue, all families would be selling memberships, which would cause a kind of human "arms race" that could have changed the balance of power in the NYC Mafia. Result: Anastasia whacked Scalise, and the Commission put a lengthy freeze on families "making" new members.
