Beyond The Mafia: Italian Americans And The Development Of Las Vegas

Notes

Notes INTRODUCTION 1.The terms Mafia, Mob, and organized crime are used by most journalists, authors, and academics interchangeably. I have used the word Mob in cases where these vari0us terms appeared interchangeably in the original source(s). I refer to Las Vegans widely reputed to have a direct or indirect connection with organized crime as The Boys. This term has several advantages. First, it does not imply that organized crime is more ethnically monolithic than it really is; the terms Mob and Mafia do. Second, it is a less negative term than Mob associate or Mafia associate, reflecting the fact that the line between legitimate and illegitimate business is often vague.Third, it is not offensive to members of any ethnic group. When one writes about the Jewish Mafia, the Irish Mafia, or the Nigerian Mafia, one may offend Italians and Italian Americans by implying that the highest form of criminal enterprise had its origins in Italy and can only be imitated by non-Italians. Perhaps members of other ethnic groups should also feel offended. Finally, The Boys is a term used by many LasVegans who lived and worked in LasVegas in the 1950s and 1960s. 2. Sociologist Daniel Bell argued persuasively forty years ago, in "Crime as an American Way of Life,"Antioch Review 13 (1953): 115-36, that Italian Americans and Jewish Americans were relative newcomers to leadership positions in organized crime. Joseph Albini also made this argument in "The Genesis and Development of Criminal Syndicates in the United States," a chapter in his The American Mafia: Genesis ofa Legend (NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971). Alan Block details the relationships among Italian-American and Jewish-American mobsters in his well-documented East Side-West Side: Organizing Crime in New York 1930-1950 (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983). CHAPTER ONE. THE EARLY YEARS: FROM LABORERS TO SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS 1. Wilbur S. Shepperson, Restless Strangers: Nevada's Immigrants and Their Interpreters (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1970), p. 14; and Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910Abstract with a Supplement for Nevada (Washington, D.C., 1913), p.209. 2. Like others who have written about Italian Americans in the Western United 145 146 Notes States, I have included individuals who emigrated from Switzerland's Italian-speaking cantons. The same approach is taken by Albin J. Cofone, "Reno's Little Italy: Italian Entrepreneurship and Culture in Northern Nevada," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 26 (Summer 1983): 97-110; and "Themes in the Italian Settlement of Nevada ," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 25 (Summer 1982): 116-32. Cofone's article "Italian Images in Northern Nevada Writing, "Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 27 (Winter 1984): 260-67; and articles by Phillip Earl and Wilbur Shepperson in the Summer 1969 Nevada Historical Society Quarterly comprehensively present the important role of the Italian born and Italian Americans in Nevada's history. 3. Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life ofItalian-Americans (NewYork: Free Press, 1962), is probably the foremost of several sociological studies of Italian-American communities on the East Coast showing the initially slow movement of first- and second-generation Italian Americans to acculturation and middleclass status. In Italians in Chicago, 1880-1930: A Study in Ethnic Mobility (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1970), Humbert Nelli perceived more mobility than did Gans. 4. Andrew F. Rolle, The Immigrant Upraised: Italian Adventurers and Colonists in an Expanding America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), p. 11. 5. Ibid., p. 7; see also Micaela di Leonardo's The Varieties ofEthnic Experience: Kinship , Class, and Genderamong California Italian-Americans (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984). He argues that the diversity of the California economy allowed Italian immigrants a greater opportunity for financial advancement than did the economies of Eastern and Midwest states. 6. Payroll and Labor Distribution files of San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad Company. Special Collections of University of Nevada, LasVegas. 7. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth U.S. Census, 1910 Abstract, pp. 43, 582. 8. Thirteenth U.S. Census, 1910 Manuscript Census. 9. Las Vegas Age, May 11, 1907, p. 8. 10. Thirteenth U.S. Census, 1910 Manuscript Census. 11. Las Vegas Age, August 8, 1905, p. 4. 12. Ibid., September 23,1905, p. 4. 13. Ibid., July 31, 1915, p. 2. 14. Ibid., January 6,1917, p. 1. 15. Ibid., June 10, 1905, p. 1. 16. Ibid., April 1, 1911, p. 1. 17. Ibid., June 10, 1905; and April 1, 1911. 18. Elizabeth...