The New World and the Old World at War

Abstract

In 1942, journalist Meyer Berger seemed to take leave of an entire age when he wrote, “Outside of a few of minor labor rackets, New York City has washed up the big shots. The rank and file who survive are insignificant.”¹ This was true for the Jewish post-Prohibition top echelons and also, among the Italian ones, for Luciano and even Genovese, although not for Costello. However, Berger did not acknowledge that the waterfront labor rackets remained far from insignificant. In Brooklyn, investigators had started at their periphery and were reaching their core, moving from Reles toward Anastasia and the two Manganos (and Camarda). But in the end they did not arrest them. Nor did they touch the rest of the Sicilian Council: Bonanno, Magaddino, Profaci, and Gambino, who remained free from any criminal prosecution, and indeed acquired the bulk of their wealth and power during the 1940s. Therefore, we can consider Berger’s point of view as being only partially correct. Dewey & Co. actually defeated the post-Prohibition big shots in Manhattan, but by so doing involuntarily selected (in Darwinian fashion) the second tier of underworld figures that would prove capable of resisting the wave of repression until it subsided.