CENTURIES before La Cosa Nostra was heard of in the U.S., the Mafia operated—even as it does today—as a brigand government in much of Sicily. Though many Italian immigrants had come to the U.S. to avoid just such oppression as the Mafia offers, a few among them formed a new Mafia in the new country. In the crowded "Little Italys" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thugs found easy prey among people who had been taught to dread the terrorists' Black Hand.
Prohibition offered the transplanted Mafiosi the chance they could not have made for themselves. Only they had the organization that could capitalize on the potential of bootlegging. Only they lived among people who already operated home stills that could quickly be converted into commercial distilleries. With fantastic profits, little crooks became big crooks, and the peculiar society of petty outlaws became the all-powerful Cosa Nostra.
There was enough intraorganizational feuding to fill a graveyard. Often the battle lines were drawn between Sicilians and Neapolitans—a distinction that causes ill feeling even today. But Sicilians from one area also fought Sicilians from another area, going so far as to take Neapolitans as allies. A particularly bloody period in 1930-31 called the Castellammarese War (the town of Castellammare del Golfo was home to one of the factions) killed about 60 gangsters. Thus the factions agreed to unite behind the Mob's modern founding father, Salvatore Maranzano.
A Castellammarese who borrowed his ideas from Julius Caesar's military command, Maranzano laid down the patterns that still, with minor modifications, hold today. To stop the killing, said Maranzano, the gangs that then existed would henceforth be recognized as families, each with its own territorial limits. Heading each family would be a boss, or Capo. Under him would be an underboss, or Sottocapo, and beneath the underboss would be any number of lieutenants, or Caporegimes, leading squads of soldiers, or "button men." One advantage of the scheme was the insulation it provided the men at the top. In the ordinary course of events, they would never put themselves within easy reach of the law.