Jewish Outfit Informer

[B.]

You make good points there, but I have a different end take.

We have a tendency to talk about New York like it's the standard / traditional model of the mafia because it's what people are most familiar with (i.e. most of us were introduced to the idea of the mafia through NYC families), but New York's approach to mafia membership is much different from the Sicilian mafia and most of the US families. I go into this deeper in the Evolution of the US mafia thread, but the idea of having one hundred, let alone three hundred members in one family is unheard of in the traditional mafia.

While New York was more traditional in their terminology and maintained closer ties to Sicily (which they do to this day), there is really nothing else like it when it comes to the way they induct members. New York does have soldiers who can be called "bosses", in that they control crews, important businesses/rackets, and even neighborhoods, but the idea of inducting that many members and distributing power among them makes for a much different organization. The complaint among members about inducting unqualified recruits has also been far more common in NYC than other cities and I have no doubt this is a byproduct of their size and approach.

I wonder what DeRose's understanding of the term "soldier" was. The word "soldier" in the military sense kind of goes away from the traditional idea of a made member being a leader in his own right and suggests NYC members came to be seen as lackeys or enforcers in some cases. Not all of them of course, but when you have 300 members in the Gambino family, the reality is you're not going to have 300 "bosses", especially when there are ~800 other members in the area divided among four other families.

While Chicago was less traditional (or at least became that way) when it came to terminology, relationships, etc. what's funny is their approach to formal membership seems much closer to the traditional approach of inducting only select individuals who are regarded as leaders in their own right. While the people Chicago inducted became far less traditional than NYC and they were willing to give non-members influential roles, their basic approach to inductions/membership is more traditional. Interesting dynamic there.

Chicago also seems to have been far more territorial, with jurisdiction limited to specific areas with designated members over those areas. In New York you had members in certain neighborhoods / boroughs who exerted control over the area, but there were no jurisdictional boundaries as long as someone did not step on another member's toes. Everything I've seen on Chicago, including DeRose's info, shows much more emphasis on territorial jurisdiction even going down to the soldier (i.e. made member, no formal rank in hierarchy) level. Having a certain jurisdiction would certainly make a member of any status more like a "boss". In NYC, where there is way more crossover and overlap in territory with no real jurisdictional boundaries, including not just members but entire families in the same area, members are going to seem much less like "bosses" in their area of operation.

[PolackTony]

You make good points there, but I have a different end take.

We have a tendency to talk about New York like it's the standard / traditional model of the mafia because it's what people are most familiar with (i.e. most of us were introduced to the idea of the mafia through NYC families), but New York's approach to mafia membership is much different from the Sicilian mafia and most of the US families. I go into this deeper in the Evolution of the US mafia thread, but the idea of having one hundred, let alone three hundred members in one family is unheard of in the traditional mafia.

While New York was more traditional in their terminology and maintained closer ties to Sicily (which they do to this day), there is really nothing else like it when it comes to the way they induct members. New York does have soldiers who can be called "bosses", in that they control crews, important businesses/rackets, and even neighborhoods, but the idea of inducting that many members and distributing power among them makes for a much different organization. The complaint among members about inducting unqualified recruits has also been far more common in NYC than other cities and I have no doubt this is a byproduct of their size and approach.

I wonder what DeRose's understanding of the term "soldier" was. The word "soldier" in the military sense kind of goes away from the traditional idea of a made member being a leader in his own right and suggests NYC members came to be seen as lackeys or enforcers in some cases. Not all of them of course, but when you have 300 members in the Gambino family, the reality is you're not going to have 300 "bosses", especially when there are ~800 other members in the area divided among four other families.

While Chicago was less traditional (or at least became that way) when it came to terminology, relationships, etc. what's funny is their approach to formal membership seems much closer to the traditional approach of inducting only select individuals who are regarded as leaders in their own right. While the people Chicago inducted became far less traditional than NYC and they were willing to give non-members influential roles, their basic approach to inductions/membership is more traditional. Interesting dynamic there.

Chicago also seems to have been far more territorial, with jurisdiction limited to specific areas with designated members over those areas. In New York you had members in certain neighborhoods / boroughs who exerted control over the area, but there were no jurisdictional boundaries as long as someone did not step on another member's toes. Everything I've seen on Chicago, including DeRose's info, shows much more emphasis on territorial jurisdiction even going down to the soldier (i.e. made member, no formal rank in hierarchy) level. Having a certain jurisdiction would certainly make a member of any status more like a "boss". In NYC, where there is way more crossover and overlap in territory with no real jurisdictional boundaries, including not just members but entire families in the same area, members are going to seem much less like "bosses" in their area of operation.

Great points. I appreciate especially the approach of "de- centering" the NY families as the default basis of comparison. Coming from a very Chicago-centered perspective, the assumption is always that Chicago is the idiosyncratic or exceptional case and the differences with NYC LCN culture and protocol are highlighted. NYC is taken by many as the unquestioned archetypal "traditional" Mafia approach (for obvious reasons), counterposed to the "Americanized" Outfit. One thing (among many) that I really appreciate about this forum is the fact that there are discussions that also put NYC into a comparative and properly historical framework. This allows for comparisons between Chicago and other US families, as well as the Sicilian CN, and the picture that emerges is much richer and more interesting.

Your point about the deterritorialization of the NY LCN is a good example. As we know, the "Honored Society" as it developed in Sicily was a markedly territorial phenomenon. Dickie for example takes this as constitutive of Cosa Nostra, that the basic unit (cosca) operates as a "shadow state" in its ability to demand revenue and mete out violence within a defined territory and population. If NYC were to have recapitulated this pattern, we'd have the Brooklyn Borgata, the Bronx Borgata etc. Many times when reading Dickie's works I'm struck by some of the similarities between the turn of the century Cosa Nostra (and it's mainland contemporaries) and Chicago.

[B.]

The fact that NYC is so non-territorial is strange when you consider that they were originally colonies centered in certain neighborhoods. There was always crossover between families and there were relationships to different boroughs / neighborhoods, but early on they easily could have decided to put territorial boundaries around those colonies like we see with the metro Palermo families who are defined strictly by neighborhood. They didn't, though, and that immediately makes them an entirely different beast from almost every other mafia family in the US and Sicily. The Colombo family is the only exception but even though they were almost completely based in southern Brooklyn they didn't own the territory and "had to" share it with every other family... their word meant nothing more in Brooklyn than the other family crews there, as long as someone didn't directly step on their toes.

This is why it took law enforcement so long to understand the NYC mafia organizations before they had high-placed informants and witnesses. If you look at early LE reports from the secret service, police, or FBN, they look at mafia figures who operated in the same area and associated together and naturally believed those men were part of the same organization. You see them use terms like "Mulberry Street Mob", as if everyone in Little Italy was part of the same group. You can't blame LE for that because that's how we typically understand, well... everything. It's like seeing a bunch of people who work in the same office building together and many of them collaborate on the same tasks. You're going to assume they all work for the same employer, but you come to find out they're all contracted by different firms and their individual supervisors might not even work in the same building. It's not intuitive, but that's how New York families evolved.

Chicago makes total sense in the way it divided territory and crews up. First, they look to have had multiple Sicilian families early on in the greater Chicago area who were geographically defined, then many of the non-Sicilians and Americanized Sicilians were also the organic product of certain neighborhoods, so when they were all combined into one you ended up with natural fault lines for defining crews/factions. I know there was some crossover between areas/crews in Chicago, but it's mostly distinct. And intuitive.

The report where Chicago inducted new members and actually divided an existing territory up further to give those new members authority over parts of the territory gives us massive insight into how Chicago viewed membership. Villain has done a great job mapping this aspect of Chicago out for us. They wanted made guys, and certain key associates, to have jurisdictional control.

I know non-members in Chicago, including non-Italians, also had jurisdictional authority but the fact that they would specifically divide a territory up to give new made members authority over an area tells us a lot about their approach to membership. You would not see that in NYC. You do see it a little bit in small US families, especially their outposts, like CC posted about how Detroit inducted Whitey Besase to serve as the "boss" of Toledo -- he was a soldier, but Detroit wanted a made member to oversee that jurisdiction. What makes Chicago unique is they did that within a concentrated metropolitan area and were willing to divide territory further to give specific members authority there.

Other non-NYC metro cities had families that were defined by territory, being the only family in the area, but you don't really see them get jurisdictional about members within the metro area itself. The Philadelphia and Buffalo members who lived in the heart of the city operated on top of each other and nobody controlled a certain area. It's only when you branch outside the city to their remote crews / areas that you see members become the jurisdictional authority, i.e. Buffalo's Utica, Rochester, Erie, and Canada crews, or Philly's Newark, South Jersey, Chester crews.

I think this is one of the reasons rank can be confusing in Chicago. You have people who would be considered "soldiers" when introduced to a made member from Milwaukee or LA, which is exactly what guys like Maniaci and Bompensiero said, but in Chicago it's understood that this member (or even associate) has total authority over an area so long as he doesn't defy the top leadership. The caporegime would then supervise all of these smaller jurisdictions, making his jurisdiction the entire territory. Naturally not all caporegimes, members, or key non-members would have equal influence, which is true for every mafia family, but what makes Chicago unique is that this influence plays out along territorial lines.

[Coloboy]

Villain -- thanks for sharing those excerpts and the thoughtful reply. That's an interesting question about Italian non-members. If a full-blooded Italian was highly influential on an operational level, you'd think they would consider him a candidate for membership. We know from other cities though that certain Italians could have all the qualifications of membership and seem like members, yet sometimes they weren't made for whatever reason. The info you've previously shared about Sam DeStefano brings that to mind, same with what you said about D'Amico. I get the impression Chicago was very selective about who they inducted.

I think the sum of info available on Chicago supports DeRose's take on certain aspects of Chicago. He was def not a top figure, but seems to have paid close attention to what he was told and observed over the years even if he crossed some wires and got some things wrong.

What do you guys think about his ~150 members estimate? He makes it clear this is in reference to made members of Italian descent and as Ed points out, he was one of the first sources to give the FBI solid info on who might be a member. I've always figured Chicago didn't need to induct as many members as say the Gambino or Genovese families because they weren't competing with any other families, so that ~150 estimate would put them slightly larger than Buffalo, the smaller NYC families, and Philadelphia which makes sense.

This is such an interesting and informative thread, and seems to back up a lot of what we have learned about the structure of the outfit.

Once again, so much of this discussion comes down to naming conventions. For example, the word “Soldier”. In New York’s version of the mafia, this essentially means a formally inducted member of LCN who is doing work on behalf of a captain. It seems this word was rarely used in Chicago. Obviously far fewer men were formally inducted, and those that were carried a much greater weight within the organization.

With this said, to say that Chicago is about the same size as Buffalo or Philadelphia in terms of LCN inducted members is probably true. All of the best information we can find seems to point to between 150 and nevermore then 200 inducted members. The main difference is obviously the power and number of men that each of these inductive members represented. In the other cities that 150 number was probably close to their full organizational count. In Chicago, I would not be surprised if during the outfits peak decades we were looking at an organization that “employed “as many as 2000 to 3000 people or more. It was run by a core group of less than 200, but had a very wide scope and was involved in many aspects of the operations of the city of Chicago.

The way I look at it, anyone who was a part of the Chicago outfit and was a made guy, probably had a small mini organization working under him.

[PolackTony]

The fact that NYC is so non-territorial is strange when you consider that they were originally colonies centered in certain neighborhoods. There was always crossover between families and there were relationships to different boroughs / neighborhoods, but early on they easily could have decided to put territorial boundaries around those colonies like we see with the metro Palermo families who are defined strictly by neighborhood. They didn't, though, and that immediately makes them an entirely different beast from almost every other mafia family in the US and Sicily. The Colombo family is the only exception but even though they were almost completely based in southern Brooklyn they didn't own the territory and "had to" share it with every other family... their word meant nothing more in Brooklyn than the other family crews there, as long as someone didn't directly step on their toes.

This is why it took law enforcement so long to understand the NYC mafia organizations before they had high-placed informants and witnesses. If you look at early LE reports from the secret service, police, or FBN, they look at mafia figures who operated in the same area and associated together and naturally believed those men were part of the same organization. You see them use terms like "Mulberry Street Mob", as if everyone in Little Italy was part of the same group. You can't blame LE for that because that's how we typically understand, well... everything. It's like seeing a bunch of people who work in the same office building together and many of them collaborate on the same tasks. You're going to assume they all work for the same employer, but you come to find out they're all contracted by different firms and their individual supervisors might not even work in the same building. It's not intuitive, but that's how New York families evolved.

Chicago makes total sense in the way it divided territory and crews up. First, they look to have had multiple Sicilian families early on in the greater Chicago area who were geographically defined, then many of the non-Sicilians and Americanized Sicilians were also the organic product of certain neighborhoods, so when they were all combined into one you ended up with natural fault lines for defining crews/factions. I know there was some crossover between areas/crews in Chicago, but it's mostly distinct. And intuitive.

The report where Chicago inducted new members and actually divided an existing territory up further to give those new members authority over parts of the territory gives us massive insight into how Chicago viewed membership. Villain has done a great job mapping this aspect of Chicago out for us. They wanted made guys, and certain key associates, to have jurisdictional control.

I know non-members in Chicago, including non-Italians, also had jurisdictional authority but the fact that they would specifically divide a territory up to give new made members authority over an area tells us a lot about their approach to membership. You would not see that in NYC. You do see it a little bit in small US families, especially their outposts, like CC posted about how Detroit inducted Whitey Besase to serve as the "boss" of Toledo -- he was a soldier, but Detroit wanted a made member to oversee that jurisdiction. What makes Chicago unique is they did that within a concentrated metropolitan area and were willing to divide territory further to give specific members authority there.

Other non-NYC metro cities had families that were defined by territory, being the only family in the area, but you don't really see them get jurisdictional about members within the metro area itself. The Philadelphia and Buffalo members who lived in the heart of the city operated on top of each other and nobody controlled a certain area. It's only when you branch outside the city to their remote crews / areas that you see members become the jurisdictional authority, i.e. Buffalo's Utica, Rochester, Erie, and Canada crews, or Philly's Newark, South Jersey, Chester crews.

I think this is one of the reasons rank can be confusing in Chicago. You have people who would be considered "soldiers" when introduced to a made member from Milwaukee or LA, which is exactly what guys like Maniaci and Bompensiero said, but in Chicago it's understood that this member (or even associate) has total authority over an area so long as he doesn't defy the top leadership. The caporegime would then supervise all of these smaller jurisdictions, making his jurisdiction the entire territory. Naturally not all caporegimes, members, or key non-members would have equal influence, which is true for every mafia family, but what makes Chicago unique is that this influence plays out along territorial lines.

Good points again, of course. I think that the Outfit system of Ward and District bosses clearly shows the influence of the city's political machine, in terms of the spatial division and delegation of authority under a central admin. To this day, Alderman in Chicago exercise "Aldermanic privilege", where they are basically given veto power over projects in their Wards, and thus are de facto "bosses" of their own sub-fiefdoms. Of course, I'm always open to the ways that Mafia forms with precedent in the old country also could've played into the formation of the particular territoriality of the Chicago Outfit. At the very least, both Sicilian and Mainlander "Men of Honor" would've been very familiar with working within and exploiting political patronage systems and machine politics.

[Villain]

You make good points there, but I have a different end take.

We have a tendency to talk about New York like it's the standard / traditional model of the mafia because it's what people are most familiar with (i.e. most of us were introduced to the idea of the mafia through NYC families), but New York's approach to mafia membership is much different from the Sicilian mafia and most of the US families. I go into this deeper in the Evolution of the US mafia thread, but the idea of having one hundred, let alone three hundred members in one family is unheard of in the traditional mafia.

While New York was more traditional in their terminology and maintained closer ties to Sicily (which they do to this day), there is really nothing else like it when it comes to the way they induct members. New York does have soldiers who can be called "bosses", in that they control crews, important businesses/rackets, and even neighborhoods, but the idea of inducting that many members and distributing power among them makes for a much different organization. The complaint among members about inducting unqualified recruits has also been far more common in NYC than other cities and I have no doubt this is a byproduct of their size and approach.

I wonder what DeRose's understanding of the term "soldier" was. The word "soldier" in the military sense kind of goes away from the traditional idea of a made member being a leader in his own right and suggests NYC members came to be seen as lackeys or enforcers in some cases. Not all of them of course, but when you have 300 members in the Gambino family, the reality is you're not going to have 300 "bosses", especially when there are ~800 other members in the area divided among four other families.

While Chicago was less traditional (or at least became that way) when it came to terminology, relationships, etc. what's funny is their approach to formal membership seems much closer to the traditional approach of inducting only select individuals who are regarded as leaders in their own right. While the people Chicago inducted became far less traditional than NYC and they were willing to give non-members influential roles, their basic approach to inductions/membership is more traditional. Interesting dynamic there.

Chicago also seems to have been far more territorial, with jurisdiction limited to specific areas with designated members over those areas. In New York you had members in certain neighborhoods / boroughs who exerted control over the area, but there were no jurisdictional boundaries as long as someone did not step on another member's toes. Everything I've seen on Chicago, including DeRose's info, shows much more emphasis on territorial jurisdiction even going down to the soldier (i.e. made member, no formal rank in hierarchy) level. Having a certain jurisdiction would certainly make a member of any status more like a "boss". In NYC, where there is way more crossover and overlap in territory with no real jurisdictional boundaries, including not just members but entire families in the same area, members are going to seem much less like "bosses" in their area of operation.

I agree, nicely said and explanied.

I think we possibly already talked about this in some previous thread but i think that Chicagos territorial form was some type of old "tradition" created by certain old time political organizations and also criminal gangs (similar to what Polack said), way before the Italian Mafia became dominant. Sometime ago i compared the areas that were controlled by the old syndicates, with the areas that were later controlled by the Sicilian Mafia and later by the Capone Mob, and to tell you the truth i cannot see much difference. On top of that, the old syndicates also had mixed ethnic alliances, like the Irish and Italians being located around the North and West parts of the city, or Italians, Jews, Irish and African-Americans being located on the South Side. The only difference was that they even divided the shore of Lake Michigan because of the steam/gamblings boats that they controlled at the time.

Regarding your question on 150 estimate....i think its close regarding the 60s but in some latter lists you can also see Alexs name, which again confirms the huge influence that some of these non-made guys had at the time and general look on the Outfits "membership" and organization.

Im planning to create one separate thread regarding the territorial bosses in Chicago, starting from the late 19th century until the 1980s

[Villain]

Now I dont want to be boring but i would like for you guys to read again Humphreys convo with Glimco....



First lets look at Glimco...he allegedly started as truck driver and enforcer for the Outfit, before entering the unions under influential members such as Mike Carrozzo and Louis Romano. By the early 1960s, Glimco was already a influential made member himself, of the Chicago family with other made members under his rule who on turn were also infiltrated in various unions. In another file Humphreys clearly says that the important spots in all unions should be only reserved for members or close associates of the "family".

Now lets look at Humphreys last two statements when he referred to Glimco into his face and lets read the words carefully...

First he says..."Anything else WE want in labor, WE call you".

By "We" Humphreys obviously means the top admin (board of bosses) since he was refering to a made guy which was Glimco. Numerous reports from the late 50s and early 60s show Humphreys as one of the top leaders.

Next Humphreys says..."I can go to a lot of people, but I call you, and I say, Joe you go there and you ought to handle it."

By "I can go to a lot of people, but i call you", Humphreys is talking about other made guys and associates in the unions who can also handle the job but he went to Glimco since he was the Outfits main Italian/made guy regarding various union matters at the time.

When Humphreys finished his sentence with "and I say, Joe you go there and you ought to handle it", he obviously meant that if he gave some order to Glimco, it was better for him to handle it or else. I would also like to add that Humphreys wasnt only involved in all unions matters, but instead he also had his fingers in the Las Vegas scheme and numerous gambling operations around Chicago and other cities.

[PolackTony]

.

Another thing I wonder here is whether Philly and Buffalo were closer to the NYC "soldier system" or to the way Chicago's ND other families worked. At least for Philly, my assumption has been that they operated more like the NY families, but they're not my area of focus of course and it would be important for an "apples to apples" comparison of membership. I'd imagine that families like KC, Detroit, NOLA, Milwaukee, etc were much more like Chicago in terms of the status of an inducted member within the broader criminal organization.