The Mafia

3 Pages 784 Words

The Mafia, also known as organized crime or the mob, began as early as the 9th century. By the early 1900’s every large state in the United States had its own Mafia sanction. They concentrated on protection rackets. Soon they expanded by racketeering in other areas such as gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging. But it wasn’t until Prohibition in the 1920’s that organized crime gained almost complete control of illegal bootlegging, narcotic trafficking, gambling, and many other illegal activities.
“A clear line divided the underworld from the upperworld. Members of the Mafia spent most of their times in occasional spates of killing and stealing, as well as in all the mundane activities of any conventional life” (Fox 11). Somewhere between the killing, stealing, and conventional life, the gangsters made their own world. “ It was a middle-earth of smoky nightclubs, the flash of chorus girls in a spotlight, a sprinkling of trumpet and saxophone, and time seemed to stop in a boozy moment of romance and glamour” (Fox 77). In the milieus the men of the underworld met to loaf and plot. Here too the people of the upperworld came to stand and gawk, to partake briefly of what they wanted only in small safe doses. “Because nightclubs, boxing matches, and racetracks had all been illegal or at least
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improper, they offered a natural habitat for these notorious gangsters. “The gangster’s presence made them all the more enticing to the upperworld, with a glistening edge of mystery and danger” (Fox 77).
The Mafia participated in many illegal activities, but drug trafficking was one they seemed to flourish in. Their drug related activities posed a threat not only to the adult population who used drugs but also to the children involved as their agents. The trafficking of narcotics often led to many murders, which the Mafia never hesitated to partake in. Many gang wars took place throughout this period....