I agree that Scarfo was intelligent, but his paranoia caused many bad decisions that led to the downfall of his organization, which really has never recovered it's full power base. Genovese and LaRocca did run a tight ship, very successful reigns for a mafia boss. Pittsburgh in general had 3 bosses over a 50-60 year time period with Amato, LaRocca and Genovese. Another powerful mob boss who had a small family but reigned with peace and prosperity was Jimmy Lanza from San Francisco who lived tone 102. I think the smaller mob families from smaller cities had it made because it allowed for more political corruption without any competition. Much easier to corrupt the key political figures.
The thing is Genovese could be lethal when he wanted to be. But he didn't use violence indiscriminately. The only exception to this I can thing of was when Lenny Strollo lost it and started having people shot right and left in 1996, but I get the feeling he did that w/o Genovese's approval. But where Genovese really excelled was in insulating himself. Because of his insulation, he died a zillionaire living in a mansion instead of dying in jail like Scarfo will. The "rape" of Youngstown, the flooding of Pittsburgh and the area around it with narcotics... Genovese both profited from and totally got away with all of that.
