Al Capone Essay, Research Paper
AL CAPONE
Al Capone was an Italian criminal working the streets of
America. He started his life with petty crime in Brooklyn, New
York. After escalating his way up in Brooklyn, Capone moved to
Chicago for bigger and better things. There Capone had prominence
supremacy as one of the giant bootlegging forerunners. His
collected and composed ways, made crime into a business that we
see in today’s mafia. Capone changed crime into a profession,
which in turn made it a business.
The word mob or mafia is a title that is often heard. When the
name Capone is associated with the title, most people think of
Capone as the true influence of the mob or mafia today. Capone
was a man who of the many prohibition leaders, lead the way for
the mafia in the early 19 hundreds. Due to the prohibition era,
Al Capone transformed the mafia into today’s business like
criminal organization.
Organized crime in the 19th century, was an ever booming scene
for the average citizen. Since the 19th century, crime and
business seemed to have gone hand in hand since the prohibition
days of Capone. Long before Al Capone became involved in
bootlegging, his excitement in life was the economic opportunity
of being a gangster on the streets. As soon as Capone reached the
legal age of fourteen, he dropped out of school to live this
economic dream of making money as a gangster on the streets. 1.Al
Capone was convinced that the opportunities for personal
advancement and material success were not available through
legitimate means, and so Capone turned toward the crime
profession of bootlegging. Capone was a smart man with a mission.
2.His mission was to succeed as a criminal in a business like
matter. Although prohibition was clearly illegal, Capone used his
prohibition as a business. His attire was that of a rich business
man, along with his ways of talking were also that of a business
man. Everything Capone did was set to flow like a business, and
prohibition help him act out his business ways.
Capone used prohibition to 3.make over a modern city for his
own use, and lived off it as blatantly and richly as a caesar of
Rome. This edict that Capone presented, seem to have establish
the standards for the ways of the mafia today. With this method
of doing business, it would only dispense the mafia with more
control over meaningful people in their pursuit of organized
crime both then and now. 4.There are several cases on record
about Capone in which the cases became more clearer when put in
the light of an analysis of how the mafia enterprise strives.
Capone’s confident and poised attitude would never retire its
way of doing business. He always did his business with little
worry of things going wrong in his bootlegging. This style of
attitude would soon become a trade mark in the likes of other
mafia leaders who would follow. Still Capone went about his way
of life during prohibition killing people whom he felt threatened
by. This made Capone a very powerful individual and in turn he
was feared by many law abiding citizens. Capone’s power in the
mafia then, is still entirely alive now in the structure of the
mafia. Although he is dead now, his legend lives on in the
leaders of today’s modern mafia.
Being a big shot business man in this present day and age takes
a lot of strenuous hours to reach for the top. Capone, although
new this, made his livelihood off his illegal bootlegging.
Capone saw that this was an effortless way of making a enormous
amount of money without performing the strenuous work other
people were doing just to get by life. the Mafia today still
follows the same route as Capone did then because of the large
amounts of money that can be brought in through crime with
business. Its all really common today to see a white collar
individual use their professional look to bring about money to
themselves.
Money was an immense thing and was always needed in the years
of Capone’s lifetime. With the depression and war, it made it
difficult for people to even cut even with the cost of living.
People always saw themselves in contention with life, and it
wasn’t becoming easier. For Capone, cutting even with the cost of
living was not even in his way. Capone realized that people where
becoming poor and had little life in them because of the money
they were receiving. Even though Capone was collecting an extreme
amount of money off prohibition, he decided to help these people
out. This caused people to think that Capone was nothing but a
conscientious guy. This technique made way to improving Capone’s
reputation as a person. Mafia leaders today are all like Capone
in the way they speak their sympathy for people who are having
difficulties in their life. Giving them an image that would in
turn make the public feel that they are warm hearted people. This
helps wash away the thoughts of the public about that particular
individual being a criminal.
Capone, unlike most other mafia leaders, is the most speaken
about mafia leader of all time. It was Capone’s bootlegging that
furnish notoriety as a mafia leader. Although Capone was involved
with bootlegging, it was his style of business like
crime that gave way to today’s mafia. Today you may not notice as
many king pin leaders of organized crime on the streets. Though
the ones you do notice can probably be identified as having the
same characteristics as Capone.
Mafia all over the world today retain the same feeling of crime
as Capone organized during prohibition. Although the time period
of when Capone was alive is gone, 5.the genius of the mafia has
been its ability to adapt to changing social conditions, so that
it can persist as an organizational form, even when it must
change its function. 6.People who see the mafia today must look
at the Mafia not as a specific organization, but as an
organization that has been adopted by Capone’s prohibition.
Expressing Capone’s valued influence on the present day mafia
would only seem fitting. Capone’s influence during prohibition on
the mafia today is close to everything that the mafia is. The way
in which the mafia conduct their actions in a crime and business
like matter today, reflects everything that Capone did during his
prohibition. Al Capone was a man with a mission in bootlegging. A
mission that used business like crime to succeed. Now half a
century later, his trend of business and crime is still seen in
mafia leaders around the world today.
ENDNOTES
1. Bergreen, Laurence, Capone : The man and the Era, New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1994, p.40.
2. Nelli, Humbert, The Business of Crime : Italians and
Syndicate Crime in the United States, New York, Oxford
University Press, 1978, p.143.
3. Schoenberg, Robert, Mr. Capone, New York, William Morrow and
Company Inc, 1992, p.23.
4. Asbury, Herbert, The Great Illusion ; An Informal History of
Prohibition, Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1950,
p.95.
5. Ianni, Francis, A Family Business ; Kinship and Social Control
in Organized Crime, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1972,
p.203.
6. Ianni, p.189.
1. Allsop, Kenneth, The Bootleggers : The Story of Chicago’s,
Prohibition Era, Hutchinson & CO (Publishers), 1968.
2. Arlacchi, Pino, Mafia Business, Mulino, Bologna ,La Mafia
Impreditrice, 1986.
3. Asbury, Herbert, The Great Illusion ; An Informal History of
Prohibition, Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1950.
4. Bergreen, Laurence, Capone : The man and the Era, New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1994.
5. Coffey, Thomas, The Long Thirst, London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd,
1975.
6. Ianni, Francis, A Family Business ; Kinship and Social Control
in Organized Crime, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1972.
7. Kobler, John, Capone : The Life and World of Al Capone, New
York, Da Capo Press, 1992.
8. Nelli, Humbert, The Business of Crime : Italians and Syndicate
Crime in the United States, New York, Oxford University Press,
1976.
9. Pasley, Fred, Al Capone, Salem, New Hampshire, Ayer Company
Publishers, 1971.
10. Schoenberg, Robert, Mr. Capone, New York, William Morrow and
Company Inc, 1992.