Essay/Term paper: Al capone

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Politics

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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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.