Al Capone Essay Research Paper AL CAPONE

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.