The Origin of Organized Crime in America - Historical Analysis & Mafia Development | Routledge American History Book | Perfect for History Students & Crime Researchers

This is an astounding piece of social analysis, which I would eagerly recommend to anyone studying the history of organized crime in the United States or even globally, as the book also discusses the transnational connection between U.S. Mafia groups and their ancestry. Certainly at times it reads like a Viking saga, except most of the names of who slaughtered whose cousin are Italian instead of Scandinavian. This book especially serves to debunk some of the myths about the Mafia as monolithic, nationally centralized or all-powerful. Though the author argues against comparing the Mafia to a centralized and bureaucratic business, the description here certainly supports the theory that the organizational complexity and variety typical of legal social organizations also applies to criminal groups. The book also contains much in the way of history that is both informative and at times entertaining. I will offer the following trivia question as an example: The 1914 assassination of Barnet Baff resulted from his involvement with which of the “oldest” rackets in New York City? A) Numbers running B) Loansharking C) Bootlegging or D) The live poultry industry; the answer of course is D (pp. 72-75): “. . . The poultry racket [was] one of the ‘oldest’ in New York. . . .The sector was rife with unethical when not illegal, practices that attracted ‘wily, scheming and in some cases dangerous’ figures. . . . From 1902, Barnet Baff entered the poultry business as a wholesaler. In 1910, he became a receiver but also operated slaughterhouses where the birds were ritually dispatched[.] . . . By means of the economies so achieved, Baff forced the key slaughterhouse men to ‘sue for terms of peace,’ by buying car lots of poultry from him at above quotation prices. Baff used identical economic leverage to force butchers to buy his surplus stock at a premium price. He also made his own deliveries, angering the trucking company and Teamsters Local 449 unionists. . . . ‘Baff was cordially hated by everyone . . .’ . . . The aim [of Baff’s slaying] was ostensibly the laudable one of eradicating an ‘overcropping’ malpractice pursued by Baff, involving the starving of chickens for slaughter until they reached the city where they were fed a combination of sand and gravel that increased their weight but swindled unsuspecting customers. . . . Although the Baff murder was an extreme case, corruption and the use of violence to achieve commercial objectives were thus no strangers to the [poultry] industry[.] . . . [As late as 1928] . . . [b]ombs, incendiary devices and gases were deployed against dealers, butchers and market men.”