Ok, so all the attrition, declining in numbers, Assimilation of Italians in those neighborhoods is BS? You don't feel the numbers have decreased!
Stop making such silly assumptions...
What I'm saying is, while the attrition and assimilation would have probably been the most significant in the last twenty years, it seems that it hasn't had much effect on the membership totals of the New York families, which is why I believe their numbers may very well have always stayed more or less the same.
I'm thinking that when the books were re-opened in the mid 1970s, the families replenished their numbers. Therefore I think that the membership totals in the 1970s would probably be comparable to the 1950s.
