The Rise of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano

The Rise of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano The Five Points Gang is one of the most infamous and storied gangs in the history of New York City. Five Points was formed in the 1890’s and maintained its’ status until the late 1910’s when America saw the beginning stages of organized crime. Both Al Capone and Lucky Luciano would rise out of this gang to become major gangsters in America.   The Five Points gang was from the lower east side of Manhattan and numbered as many as 1500 members including two of the most recognizable names in â€Å"mob† history – Al Capone and Lucky Luciano – and who would change the way that the Italian crime families would operate. Al Capone Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899, to hardworking immigrant parents. After quitting school after the sixth grade, Capone held several legitimate jobs that included working as a pinboy in a bowling alley, a clerk in a candy store, and a cutter in a book bindery. As a gang member, he worked as a bouncer and bartender for fellow gangster Frankie Yales at the Harvard Inn. While working at the Inn, Capone received his nickname â€Å"Scarface† after he insulted a patron and was attacked by her brother. Growing up, Capone became a member of the Five Points Gang, with his leader being Johnny Torrio. Torrio moved from New York to Chicago to run brothels for James (Big Jim) Colosimo. In 1918, Capone met Mary Mae Coughlin at a dance. Their son, Albert Sonny Francis was born on December 4, 1918, and Al and Mae were wed on December 30th. In 1919, Torrio offered Capone a job to run a brothel in Chicago which Capone quickly accepted and moved his entire family, which included his mother and brother to Chicago. In 1920, Colosimo was assassinated – allegedly by Capone – and Torrio took control of Colosimo’s operations to which he added bootlegging and illegal casinos. Then in 1925, Torrio was wounded during an attempted assassination after which he placed Capone in control and moved back to his home country of Italy. Al Capone was now finally the man who was in charge of the city of Chicago. Lucky Luciano Salvatore Luciana was born on November 24, 1897, in the Lercara Friddi, Sicily. His family immigrated to New York City when he was ten years old, and his name was changed to Charles Luciano. Luciano became known by the nickname â€Å"Lucky† which he claimed he earned by surviving a number of severe beatings while growing up on the Lower East side of Manhattan. By the age of 14, Luciano dropped out of school, had been arrested numerous times, and had become a member of the Five Points Gang where he befriended Al Capone. By 1916 Luciano was also offering protection from the local Irish and Italian gangs to his fellow Jewish teens for five to ten cents a week. It was also around this time that he became associated with Meyer Lansky who would become one of his closest friends and his future business partner in crime. On January 17, 1920, the world would change for Capone and Luciano with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. â€Å"Prohibition† as it became known provided Capone and Luciano the ability to garner huge profits through bootlegging.   Shortly after the start of Prohibition, Luciano along with future Mafia bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello had started a bootlegging consortium that would become the largest such operation in all of New York and allegedly stretched as far south as Philadelphia. Supposedly, Luciano was personally grossing approximately $12,000,000 a year from bootlegging alone. Capone controlled all alcohol sales in Chicago and was able to set up an elaborate distribution system that consisted of bringing in alcohol from Canada as well as setting up hundreds of small breweries in and around Chicago. Capone had his own delivery trucks and speakeasies. By 1925, Capone was earning $60,000,000 per year from alcohol alone.

How to bond with your employees without compromising your authorityÂÂ

How to bond with your employees without compromising your authority   Authority and power are complex issues that come with the task of being a manager. In the workplace, the ability to hire, fire, and give raises sets the power dynamic between employees and bosses. But while power and authority are clearly linked, authority is a bit murkier to define- it relies on the established relationship between employees and their bosses and can be built over years and lost in an instant. Bonding with your employees and projecting authority are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the two things are much closer than one might think.Here are a few ways you might develop both leadership traits.Establish an atmosphere of mutual respectAuthority doesn’t come automatically with a job title. It is earned when managers are clearly knowledgeable and competent, and when they get results. But you can’t get those results without team effort- and your interaction with employees plays a vital role in establishing authority. In order to truly lead a team, you need t o earn trust and establish an atmosphere of mutual respect with employees. If you find yourself pounding on your desk and engaging in intimidation tactics, chances are you are trying to assert authority rather than earn it. But if you build a base of shared respect, then bonding with employees will grow your authority rather than diminish it.Take an interest in your employeesYou don’t want to invite daily gab sessions or become a shoulder to cry on, but being responsive to employees and really listening can help foster your authority. Simple things like knowing where your employees went to college, or the names of their family members, or their personal interests and hobbies, can help you understand their motivations and actions at work and help establish basic respect. This type of bonding also fosters a working relationship that can open the channels of communication so that when your employees have a good idea, they can reach out. This way you can be the boss employees wan t to listen to and will trust to follow.Be a real personSo, can you drink a beer with your employees and just be a regular person? Sure. But you can’t drink too much or share too much personal information. Letting employees see that you’re a real person with your own life and interests outside of work does not compromise your authority, but is part of that two-way street of building mutual respect. Social settings like the office party can help you bond while keeping it professional.hbspt.cta.load(2785852, '9e52c197-5b5b-45e6-af34-d56403f973c5', {});Set boundariesAfter you relax with employees at an office party or talk up your golf game, you need to be clear when it’s time to focus back on work. The afternoon progress meeting is not the place to shoot the breeze, so take care to establish the atmosphere you want with a simple, firm-yet-kind acknowledgment of when it’s time to get back to business.Head off problem employeesOccasionally there will be the e mployee who can’t separate the friendly boss from the friend and switch gears back to work-mode. If you find an employee becoming overly familiar, too joking, or disrespectful, this is where your authority needs to put its foot down. Nipping a problem in the bud is best, and opening the channels of communication with the individual employee can turn the situation around.Bonding with your employees, when done the right way, can actually help you gain authority. It can take years to cultivate but largely stems from you setting appropriate boundaries and maintaining genuine interest in your employees as people. So ask yourself: are you approachable, or intimidating? And which do you think will get better results?