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.