The Mob and the City

by C. Alexander Hortis

  While Prohibition temporarily boosted the Irish bootleggers, the Irish mob as a whole continued to decline. Joe Valachi started out with an Irish gang before joining the Mafia. The Irish assassin Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll ended up working for Salvatore Maranzano. Madden left for Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1935.14 Had Irish immigration peaked forty years later, organized crime may have been quite different. We might today be discussing the Dwyer, Higgins, Lonergan, Madden, and McGrath gangs of the Irish mob.

  THE RACE FACTOR: WHY AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND CHINESE RACKETEERS WERE ISOLATED

  Though African-American gangsters were strong in black Harlem and San Juan Hill, there were no major black labor racketeers in New York City. This was not for lack of interest. In 1935, a former FBI agent reported that Casper Holstein, Harlem's “Bolito King” (a numbers lottery), was backing union violence in his native Virgin Islands.15 Although Chinese tongs engaged in forms of racketeering in Chinatown, they were nonentities in Gotham's unions.16 This was due in part to their smaller numbers, but it was also the result of prejudice in the underworld.

  African-American and Chinese racketeers had relatively few entry points to union hierarchies. The building trades were notorious for preserving the Irish and Italian dominance of the construction industry at the expense of black workers. The International Longshoremen's Association did not have a single black union organizer on staff into the 1950s. It is inconceivable that any African-American longshoreman with criminal ties could have risen to be a union pier boss in the way that Anthony Anastasio did.17

  Racial distrust ran through the underworld, too. As we will see, the Corsican drug traffickers refused to work with African Americans. The black gangster Frank Lucas recalls how even after he became friends with Vincent “The Chin” Gigante in prison, they “never talked business,” since they “wouldn't have had anything to talk about in that sense.”18

  SOMETIME RIVALS AND FREQUENT COLLABORATORS: THE JEWISH RACKETEERS

  Only the Jewish syndicates were roughly on par with the Cosa Nostra as of the 1930s. The Jewish gangsters have been portrayed as hired help for the Mafia. They were more than that. Jewish and Italian gangsters regularly met on equal footing and pulled off schemes together. Some like Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz worked alongside wiseguys well into the 1960s.19

  Overall though, the Jewish crime syndicates were being surpassed by the Mafia starting roughly in the mid-1930s. Why did the Jewish labor racketeers decline?

  Large-scale Jewish immigration began somewhat earlier than south Italian immigration, and Jews exited racketeer-prone industries somewhat earlier.20 Driven out by pogroms from urbanized, artisanal communities in Eastern Europe, 64 percent of Jewish immigrants were artisans or skilled workers. By comparison, south Italian immigrants, who came largely from underdeveloped rural areas, were about 25 percent artisans and skilled workers.21 The children of Jewish immigrants were far more likely to become business managers, sole proprietors, or professionals. Jews went to college at higher rates than any other group, especially after the Second World War. By 1950, 75 percent of second-generation Jews were white-collar workers, compared to 33 percent of second-generation Italians.22

  Potential sources of new Jewish gangsters were disappearing as well. In the 1940s and ’50s, Jews flocked to the suburbs in huge numbers, causing inner-city enclaves to recede. Brownsville, Brooklyn, was once the home base of Jewish gangsters.23 By the time Henry Hill was growing up in Brownsville in the 1950s, he was drawn to Paul Vario's crew of the Lucchese Family.24 The Jewish gangs also appear to be less kinship-based than the Mafia “families.” Although there are dozens of books by ex-mobsters who followed relatives into the Mafia (for example, Michael Franzese's Blood Covenant),25 there are virtually no equivalent memoirs by Jewish criminals who followed family into the mob. As historian Jenna Weissman Joselit puts it, organized crime “was a one-generation phenomenon” for Jews in New York.26

  MOB ON THE ASCENT: THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN MAFIA

  The Italian-American Mafia was best positioned to take advantage of the growth of labor unions in the 1930s. The reasons for this lay in patterns of immigration and labor force participation.

  South Italians in the Labor Force: An “Inbetween People”

  The early Sicilian immigrants, with their dark skin and unfamiliar customs, were deemed not fully “white” in the eyes of many native-born Americans. As the scholar Robert Orsi has shown, south Italians were treated like an “inbetween people,” who were “neither securely white nor nonwhite.”27 When a construction superintendent was asked about Italian laborers at a Congressional hearing in 1892, he gave this revealing answer:

  Q. You don't call a Chinaman or an Italian a white man?

  A. No, sir; an Italian is a Dago.28

  Those from the Mezzogiorno, the economically underdeveloped south of Italy, were largely agricultural or unskilled laborers, and came under the padrone system of contract labor.

  As a result, Sicilians and other south Italians were relegated to the toughest, dirtiest jobs. As a 1931 study found, “The Italian has perhaps been the most generally abused of all the foreign born” and thus Italians “have done the hard and dangerous work in the community.”29 This is reflected in the labor force. Italians worked disproportionately in Gotham's most labor-intensive industries. They represented 40 percent or more of the building trades and the garment manufacturing, longshoring, and waste hauling industries (see table 4–1).

  South Italians were a significant portion of the seventy thousand teamsters so critical to moving goods through the city. Most of the ten thousand independent ice and coal dealers were from southern Italy. About 90 percent of the thirteen hundred licensed pushcart peddlers of fruits and vegetables were Italians. Fully one-third of the eighteen thousand members of New York's largest musicians’ union were Italians who, along with African Americans and Jews, were essential to the nightclub business.31 These were all “fragile” sectors prone to extortion or racketeering.

  Why the Mafia was Poised for Labor Racketeering

  Driven into the most labor-intensive jobs, Italian workers ironically came to dominate key labor forces by the 1930s (see table 4–1). The Little Italies were still thriving enclaves, skeptical of police, the home base of mafiosi, and the recruiting grounds for young men. At the same time, second-generation Italian Americans were increasingly accepted as “white” by society. “The Chinese who seeks to leave his Chinatown is under a severe handicap not experienced by the Italian who emerges from Little Italy,” observed a sociologist in 1931.32 During the New Deal, Italian American workers became strong constituencies, courted by labor leaders, and in control of many union locals.33

  These forces positioned the Mafia families for labor racketeering. Racketeers preyed on industries and unions that were most accessible to them. As historian Jenna Weissman Joselit explained, early Jewish racketeers took advantage of “the kosher poultry and garment industries while the Italians followed suit by exploiting their countrymen in the fish, fruit, and vegetable markets.”34 The modern Mafia likewise thrived in industries that were heavily southern Italian.35

  What explains this connection? There are multiple reasons:

  First, union locals comprised of Italian workers demanded to be represented by Italian labor leaders. This limited rival Irish and Jewish racketeers. The Irish presidents of the ILA ceded the Brooklyn locals to Italian mobsters for this very reason. “[President] Teddy [Gleason] is still Irish. You understand? He joined forces because he got no choice,” said racketeer Sonny Montella on a surveillance bug.36 In the construction industry, while Irish leaders held on to the highest skilled building trades, there were union locals made up entirely of Italians, some of which came under the influence of mafiosi.37

  Second, Italian mafiosi could call on neighborhood and kinship ties in Italian labor forces—“networking” in today's parlance. ILA official Emil Camarda had known Mafia boss Vincent Mangano from growing up together in Sicily. One of his successors, ILA Local 1814
official Anthony Scotto, had as an in-law Albert Anastasia. When the boxer Rocky Graziano was turning professional, connected guys in the neighborhood introduced him to Eddie Coco, a mob associate, and told the young fighter that Coco would be his new manager.38

  Third, Italian mobsters could conversely apply social pressures to roll over dissidents. When John Montesano, the owner of a family waste-hauling business, wanted to get out of a partnership with a mobbed-up carter, the Mafia demanded he pay a gratuitous $5,000 fee. Montesano was pressured into paying by a blood relative who also happened to be a member of the mob. “What is wrong with you, kid? Every time I turn around, you are in trouble,” his relative warned.39 Similarly, it was extremely difficult to reform the Brooklyn waterfront when so many ILA thugs and convicts lived amongst the longshoremen.

  Fourth, as Italian workers became business owners in these industries, it facilitated collusive behavior between business and labor. Since the waste-hauling industry was made up of Italian families who knew each other, it was easy to form cartels to exclude outsiders.40 Likewise, as Italian construction workers became material men and suppliers, Mafia-run cartels flourished. Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, an ex-construction worker, transitioned easily into the building rackets as a rising member of the Gambino Family.41

  THE MAFIA'S TAKEOVER OF UNION LOCALS IN THE 1930s

  The Mafia families used these entry points to emerge as the top labor racketeers in industry after industry. As we saw earlier, Italian gangsters like Paolo Vaccarelli and the Anastasio brothers took over ILA locals as the workforces changed from Irish to Italian. By the 1930s, the Cosa Nostra controlled ILA locals in South Brooklyn, Staten Island, and key Manhattan piers.

  New York's construction industry saw a similar evolution. During the 1920s, the Lockwood Committee investigation uncovered “tribute” payoffs to building trades czar Robert Brindell, and business cartels engineered by the building contractors. Out of the more than five hundred defendants who were prosecuted, none of the labor officials, and only a small set of building contractors, were Italians. Starting in the late 1950s, scores of mafiosi, mob-linked labor officials, and contractors were being prosecuted or investigated for similar rackets.42

  In Lower Manhattan's garment industry, the Mafia entered the industry after Italian workers opened their own garment shops. The Cosa Nostra was very conscious of the new opportunities this presented. “It used be that that this industry was all Jewish, but now the Italians are really getting into it,” John Dioguardi explained to other mobsters. “Guys like Joe Stretch [Joe Stracci] control big companies like Zimmet and Stracci.” The Mafia focused on trucking union locals in the garment district, and on diverting production to nonunion shops.43

  In the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, President Daniel Tobin had once dismissed Italian immigrants as “rubbish.”44 As these new immigrants became truckers, the IBT organized them. Later on, Tobin began receiving death threats from mobsters seeking to “break into our local unions.” Mafiosi Vito Genovese and Joseph “Socks” Lanza defeated a campaign to reform IBT Local 202 by branding their opponents as Communists and making nationalist appeals to Italian teamsters. Jimmy Hoffa cut deals with Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo and John Dioguardi.45 IBT official Roy Williams dealt with Italian, Jewish, and some Irish mobsters because that was “the way New York is separated out anyway.”46

  THE NEW DEAL: THE SURGE OF LABOR UNIONS IN THE 1930s

  The Mafia's racketeers came to power just as the labor unions were taking off in the 1930s. Simply put, the Cosa Nostra had great timing.

  After a long history of employer attacks on unions, New Deal–era legislation granted unprecedented rights and protections to labor unions.47 Labor union membership surged. In 1908, New York City had 240,000 union members. By 1950, union membership quadrupled to a million—upwards of one-third of Gotham's workforce.48

  Although legitimate unionists were the main beneficiaries, the Mafia took advantage of the shift toward labor as well. In the first year of operation of the government's new Regional Labor Boards (1933–34), complaints and arbitration demands against employers were filed by none other than: Building Service Employees Local 51B, represented by George Scalise, a partner of mafioso Anthony Carfano;49 IBT Local 202, a mob-controlled trucking local in the fresh-food markets, which would see its union officials go to prison for racketeering;50 and Teamsters Local 138, which was controlled by Jewish racketeer Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, who used the union and a trucking association to extort payoffs in the baking industry.51

  Many union locals ended up sheltering racketeers from scrutiny, too. With notable exceptions, like those of David Dubinsky of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), national unions avoided dealing with racketeers in union locals. Reform was stymied by a hands-off approach to locals, mobster intimidation, and the weakness or indifference of rank-and-file members. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was lackluster in pursuing cases of union corruption.52

  THE MOB'S UNION LEVER

  The labor union became a new lever of power for the Mafia. Not only was labor racketeering a moneymaker for the Mafia families, but it also gave them influence over businessmen and politicians in New York and the United States. “We got our money from gambling, but our real power, our real strength, came from the unions,” said mobster Vincent “Fish” Cafaro. “Ultimately, it was labor racketeering that made Cosa Nostra part of the sociopolitical power structure of twentieth-century America,” James Jacobs argues convincingly.53

  Greater coordination between the Mafia syndicates, the expansion of national labor unions, and the advent of telephones and airplanes all facilitated labor racketeering across the country. “The gangsters who infiltrated a local in New York were tied into a national syndicate that included gangsters attempting to do the same thing in Chicago, Kansas City, and in numerous other locations where Teamster locals and criminal organizations existed side by side,” described a report on the IBT.54 In dealing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Chicago Outfit leader Paul Ricca told mobsters “to be free to call on Charlie Lucky [Luciano] or on Frank Costello…if we find any difficulties here [in New York] in our work, and if we need anything to call on them, because that is their people.”55

  Take John Dioguardi's consulting work on the ILGWU. In 1953, Dioguardi flew to California to assist mobsters in entering the garment industry in Los Angeles. He told them to target an ILGWU official. “What you've got to do is hurt this fucking guy and make him run to New York,” Dubinsky advised. “Let [David] Dubinsky know you're going to have your own fucking way out here.” They sent a union official to the hospital with a cracked skull, and opened a union-free shop. The kid bully from Little Italy had gone national.56

  CASE STUDIES OF MOB POWER OVER NEW YORK UNIONS

  Equally important as taking power was keeping and using that power. The following case studies show how the Mafia controlled and exploited unions.

  Case One: Squashing Union Reformers—The International Longshoremen's Association on the South Brooklyn Docks

  The Mafia used fear and terror to maintain its stranglehold on the South Brooklyn waterfront. In 1939, an insurgent led a rank-and-file uprising of longshoremen. The mob's reaction taught a terrible lesson to anyone who would challenge its power.

  The Mob's Waterfront in the 1930s

  No outsider could crack the waterfront. Organizers for the Communist Party USA in Manhattan got nowhere on the other side of the East River. CPUSA organizers spread leaflets attacking the ILA in Brooklyn, but they gained little traction among the Catholic longshoremen.57

  Although the prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey obtained convictions of racketeers in the restaurant and garment business, and sent Charles Luciano to prison in 1936 for a prostitution ring, he got nowhere on the waterfront. Later in life, Dewey revealed what happened. “There was a time when we thought we had it organized…to really make fronta
l assault on the waterfront,” he recalled. “We finally found a policeman who would undertake to be head of the undercover investigation.” The officer had second thoughts. “After a week of it, he came back and said, ‘I'm sorry. I'd like to ask to be excused from this assignment,’” recounted Dewey.

  The prosecutor described the web of power on the docks. “The unions were filled with ex-convicts,” he noted. “They don't talk.” The shippers were often complicit in schemes to ensure labor peace. “You can never tell whether what you've found is extortion or bribery,” explained Dewey. Most importantly, the “political power of some people connected with the water front is very great, and they've always been close to Tammany Hall.” The racket buster was stymied on the docks.58

  The Insurgent: Peter Panto and the 1939 Campaign

  Peter Panto was an unlikely insurgent. Born in America in 1911, he spent his childhood in Italy and returned to Brooklyn as a young man. Like so many poor Italians, Panto became a longshoreman on the Red Hook piers. As a member of ILA Local 929, Panto paid union dues to Anthony Giustra (brother of the slain gangster Johnny “Silk Stockings” Giustra).59

  Panto was stirred by the indignities he suffered under his own union. Panto gave back almost half his salary through kickbacks to get work. What really bothered him was that the ILA sold eight thousand mandatory “tickets” to a Christopher Columbus Day Ball in a hall that held only five hundred. For all that, the ILA did not even hold rank-and-file meetings.60

  In the spring of 1939, the twenty-eight-year-old Panto began organizing private meetings with fellow longshoremen. Panto had an infectious smile, he spoke both Italian and English, and he was persuasive in both. He started calling public meetings in Brooklyn. The audience grew from several hundred to over twelve hundred longshoremen by July. In Panto's speeches, he raised practical issues like: “Are you in favor of Union Hiring Halls?” or “Are you ready…to help organize the I.L.A. on a democratic basis?”61 To the mob, those were dangerous ideas.