Women and Bootleggers
The Italian WOMEN are the ones that decided to NOT ALLOW their children to speak Italian outside the home so they can be considered real Americans and speak English.
I know that my own grandma and her cousin were spat at for walking on the sidewalk instead of the gutter. And my grandma's cousin gave that man such a beating with her pocketbook. This is what we Italians had to go through in the early 1900's. This is why there were wiseguys to PROTECT the Italian people from all the discrimination. We couldn't trust the police the government why would they help our people. During ww2 the Italian ppl were considered enemies of the U.S. They had curfews allowed to go only to and from work. Of course there's more I can add but that's enough for now.
Bootlegging made us all rich and we were able to dig ourselves out of the gutter.
Every Italian had a bootlegger in the family:)
Do you actually believe this though?
The majority of Italians and Italian-Americans were not involved in organized crime or the mob.
Yes some were; but this does not mean that the majority of people were since they were not.
Would making wine at home be considered "bootlegging"? I mean it's not buying it in a store. I have Italian relatives who did this, and they still do it but they do not sell it they just give it away to other family members and friends, or share a small glass of it with people during a dinner.
Also a lot of old Italian immigrants I have met and their kids who are first generation Italian-Americans did not like the mob and said how the idea that they were somehow protected by the mob was a myth. They said that the Italian mob would extort money from local Italian run mom and pop run businesses.
The majority of Italians were NOT criminals.
Nope I do not believe making wine at home is bootlegging. It's just a tradition. Everybody did it.
The truth of the matter is that Italian families were fairly large in number. Most but not all had a relative or two or three who were willing to get into the bootlegging business during that era. They are already making their own wine at home so why not make booze and turn it into a profit. There's a LOT of money in it. Most Italians at that time weren't educated in their own native language and had no job skills. So it's a quick way to make easy cash for the WHOLE family. Remember this is a time when you live in the same house or right next door to ur relatives. So now nobody is going hungry. Now the family has money more money than they've ever seen in their life. So what do the responsible ones do like my family? They use that money to start up businesses, to buy property and that's exactly what they did.
I was told that this was very common but it's a hush hush subject cuz people don't want to say that their families started out as bootleggers.
We can argue all day about this but I know what I was told and this is what was happening in the Italian families who got themselves out of the gutter in the 1920's.
As for the protection from the gangsters I was told that the Italians came over and settled with the same people from their villages. So we all started out together as just Italians seeking a better life. You have to stay in your own neighborhood. The police are not going to help your kind. You are AFRAID. So now all of a sudden you see Tony D who decides to become a street hood n you've known him from Italy since you were a kid so you trust this guy. He says he can protect you and you believe him so you pay this friend who is now a hood. Protect you from what? Sometimes things did happen like a thug comes into YOUR STORE in YOUR neighborhood trying to rob you. Who do you go to Yup, Tony D... And he will sure as hell get a hold of that thug and give him a beating, get the money back for you and of course take his cut. And that's just how it works.
So go ahead u can say whatcha gotta say to me but in the end
All I gotta say to u guy is this ---Unless u know what I know U DONT KNOW NUTTIN
I doubt you're even Italian-American. If you really were you would know how much Italians and Italian-Americans do not like the mafia or mob. You also would know how they do not like how the mob does extortion to their own people, and Italian/Italian-American owned businesses as you wrote hypothetically in your post. The whole "We protect our own and look after other Italians/Italian-American people and businesses" idea is a myth. The mafia wants to make money and doesn't care about taking it, forcing it, or extorting it from other honest Italian/Italian-American people and their businesses. 