And you basing that on what exactly? It would certainly seem narcotics are the single biggest money maker, based on published figures (even allowing for exaggeration) and statements by law enforcement over the years. But it's an assumption on your part to say drugs alone are a bigger money maker than everything else combined. And that's looking at the entire business as a whole. How much market share each drug dealer or drug organization has is going to vary.



I think you need to go back and watch the movie again. Vito Corleone never changed his opinion. From his meeting with Sollozzo to the meeting with the other bosses, his feeling was drugs would destroy the families because politicians and law enforcement would refuse to look the other way like they did with gambling, liquor, or prostitution. It was the other bosses, not to mention even guys in Vito's own family like Sonny and Tom Hagen, who believed drugs could give them (or their rivals) the means to buy more protection.



What relatively little information there is on Matthews includes information gleaned from wiretaps that his drug organization was doing business in 21 states. Now how big the market was in each state, and how much of the market he had, is a good question to ask. New York was always far and away the biggest heroin market. And, in terms of the sphere of the NY families at the time, you're also talking about New Jersey and some of the surrounding Northeast states.

Matthews, Lucas, and Barnes all operated around the the same general time frame - 1960's and 1970's. The French Connection lasted from the 1950's to the early 1970's and from there the Pizza Connection lasted to the mid 1980's. The $1.6 billion figure for the Pizza Connection is what prosecutors were able to document for the amount of heroin trafficked over a 5 year period between 1979 and 1984.

Nobody is denying all of those guys were big in the drug trade. But, while they were able to bypass the Mafia for their supply in some cases, that's different than saying they surpassed the Mafia, i.e. in terms of being higher up the drug chain or moving more drugs. And for the sake of argument, even if they did, their runs were relatively short-lived.



The existence of a population and industry which the mob can exploit is certainly a factor but it doesn't mean much if there's no mob to exploit it. The single biggest cause of mob families has been attrition - recruiting pools dwindling as Italian Americans moved into the mainstream of society. Look at any recent map of where there are the most Italians in the U.S. It's no coincidence upwards of 90% of the remaining mob membership is in the Northeast.



On one hand, I agree that no other group has had the benefit of so many factors coming together, and at just the right time, that the LCN had. Those were huge reasons for the mob's success. However, on the other hand, there's a reason why it was able to take full advantage of those factors. As I said before, the Italians had the self-perpetuating criminal tradition that the Irish and Jewish mobs didn't. Fast forward to today and the Italians (where they are still a factor) continue to have the hierarchy that many of the newer groups (Russians, Chinese, and Albanian criminal enterprises) don't. These newer groups are more horizontal and fluid, which makes them harder targets for RICO, but also prevents them from growing into the kind of organizations could make them into the kind of criminal threat that many in the past predicted.



I'm not sure what post you're referring to but I haven't said anything prejudiced in this thread.



Ralphie may be taking about how the Outfit moved in and took over the numbers racket in the black communities of Chicago in the 1950's.



I'm not sure where either you or Ralphie are coming from on this. For years, Johnson was the biggest black gangster in Harlem. But he ultimately answered to the Italians. If you ever read A Matter of Honor by the late NYPD offical Remo Franceschini, he talks about how they thought Johnson and other black gangsters controlled the numbers in Harlem. But, when they really investigated it, it was actually the Italians (mainly the Genovese family) who controlled the banks and really called the shots. Johnson was essentially their front man in the black community.



There's certainly a lot of truth to that. In New York, the garment center, food markets, airport, and Javits center are no longer factors. The mob is still involved in waste hauling and recycling but on a much reduced level and it no longer has the benefit of controlling the industry through associations (replaced by the NY BIC) and control of related Teamsters locals. It's maintained a presence on the waterfront, especially the New Jersey ILA locals, but they've taken a beating over the past 10 or 15 years. The one big exception, in my opinion, is construction (and related things like demolition and trucking). The nature of the industry - it's so much bigger, vast, and complicated than the others - provides the mob with seemingly endless ways to be involved. And there hasn't been the kind of widespread industry reform we saw the Giuliani administration do with garbage or the wholesale food markets. That's not to say the mob's clout hasn't been reduced in construction as well but it's far and away where their loss of power has been the most minimal and where they still have the most involvement. Long after everything else is gone, in terms of legitimate industry, the NY mob will still have construction.