Conveniently for the Mob, the work of manufacturing garments is divided between two kinds of companies, each performing a different but necessary job. Some known as jobbers, design the clothing, buying the cloth and accessories, organize the manufacturing and ultimately sell to the retailers. The makers, known as “cut and sew” are referred to as contractors. They employ the most labour; the jobbers make the most decisions. Lucchese was a jobber.

The two main unions involved in the industry are the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Teamsters. All fabrics and raw materials needed in the construction of clothing has to be moved by road, either from interstate mills, or from docks when goods are being imported. All finished goods have to be trucked to their final destination, either within New York or across America.

The opportunity for the Mob to cream off huge profits by controlling these two vital areas was illustrated on August 22^nd, 1977 when Women’s Wear Daily, the trade paper of the textile and apparel industry, started a series of investigative reports entitled” The Mafia: Seventh Avenue’s Silent Partner” in which it reported-“ that Cosa Nostra, our thing, could call New York’s multi-billion dollar clothing industry their thing, because just about every piece of clothing made there is touched by the hands or the money or the influence of organized crime.”

The articles identified at least twenty firms by name in the garment centre as being controlled by Mob figures, names such as Gambino, Eboli, Lucchese, Diouguardi, Plumeri, and the details were staggering.

The article stated that most of the legitimate businessmen in the industry, accepted the Mob as inevitable just as they accepted traffic-clogged streets and high taxes, it was part of doing business. Leading New York banks and textile firms apparently had no reservations about dealing with Mob-controlled firms, and the major department stores didn’t mind buying from them. Local garment manufacturers and union officials would often sit down with gangsters in the discreet darkness of fashionable restaurants or busy bars and cocktail lounges, and amiably discuss the day’s business trials and tribulations. Others, if they were well enough connected and having problems with late deliveries or labour disputes, would ask favours from powerful Mafiosi such as Frank Tieri, boss of the Genovese family, or Anthony Corallo, ruling head of the Lucchese family, but there was always a price to pay in return.

A New York City police detective who worked undercover as a garment manufacturer, explained-“If you ask for certain favours, one of the conditions is that you put one or two names on your payroll. Those persons don’t do any work. They may come in from time to time. Eventually they may start telling you how to run your business.”

The article also contained extensive examples of how overall Mob control in the garment industry facilitates loan-sharking, shakedowns for “labour peace” and professional truck hijackings.

The article explained how the industry avoided antitrust prosecutions under its non-competition arrangements. Years before the government had started making inquiries about possible antitrust violations in trucking, the industry simply stopped keeping written logs of which truckers were wedded to which companies. Now the arrangements were simply “ gentlemen’s agreements,” and no longer put in writing.

One trucker was quoted as saying, “When I first joined the association I asked if I had to register my accounts and they said, 'no we don’t do that any more. It’s illegal.'”

What was disclosed in the Women’s Wear Daily was news, but it wasn’t new. It had been going on for almost fifty years.

The Garment Centre stretches over 40 square blocks in mid-town Manhattan -- rabbit warren of clothing manufacturers and wholesalers, textile houses and hundreds of sub contractors, cutting and sewing clothing for the huge, insatiable ready-made retail market. The industry grew out of the massive immigration into New York in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and by the 1920’s was a major element in the economy of the city. Three quarters of all New York City Jews engaged in manufacturing were in the clothing industry. It was an industry subject to constant conflict. Among the more significant of the professional criminals to exploit it and gain control over it were Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and his fearsome partner, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro.

Louis Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro (POLICE)

"Lepke" Buchalter’s nickname was a term of Yiddish endearment, while Shapiro’s came from his almost unintelligible pronunciation of the English language. When ordering anyone away from him he would shout, “get out of here,” but the words would tumble out of his mouth as “Gurrah.”

Lepke started out as a lowly sneak thief, so poor that when he was first arrested at the age of sixteen, the police officer noticed he was wearing stolen shoes, both for the left feet! In 1914 he teamed up with Shapiro, strong as a bull and built like an ape. Having both robbed the same street cart, they found they were running off in the same direction, so kept going for the next twenty-two years. Together they began to infiltrate the unions that represented the garment workers. By 1922, Buchalter had been in prison twice, and he and Shapiro were working with a gang of professional strikebreakers operating through the industry. Slowly they moved into labour racketeering, and by the early 1930’s Buchalter had gained virtual control of the business.

His formula for success was simple. Take control of unions and at the same time infiltrate and control trade associations. That way as “Lepke” was heard to say, “ You get both management and labour in your pocket.”

Buchalter soon discovered the gold mine offered by the men’s suiting industry. Although there were as many as 50,000 workers in the union that supported this industry, The Amalgamated Union of Clothing Workers, each individual section had its own local. Buchalter also found out that the entire industry depended on the workers who cut the cloth, and the truckers who shipped the goods. Out of the 50,000 union members, they amounted to only 1900. By controlling them, he had a closure on the entire movement.

By 1932, he had control of Local 4- the cutters local- aided by its corrupt leaders, and consequently could stop and start the business whenever it suited him. He was raking in over $2 million dollars a year from this point on from payoffs by manufacturers for “labour peace” He also simultaneously organized the truck owners and self employed drivers into an employment trade association. This was an act that would have far reaching consequences, and was perhaps the most significant step in the development of what is now called business racketeering. One of the first actions of the association was to raise cartage costs for men’s clothing- and then share out the windfall profits among the association members.

Racket investigators recalled that the terrible twins did not have to buy their way into any business. Their reputation for violence sufficed. Lepke would go into a firm and say “You don't have to put us on your payroll, nothing will happen to you.” Businessmen told investigators that the most frightening thing in the world was to hear Lepke and Gurrah say nothing was going to happen.

Always on the lookout for new ways to milk the economic flow of the Garment Centre, Lepke came across another innovative measure that would bring him into partnership with Gaetano Lucchese.

Twice each year the buyers from department stores, retail chains and wholesalers, poured into the area to start searching for the new season's lines. These were critical times for manufacturers, whose very existence could often hinge on the capricious whim of the visiting buyer. They were courted assiduously, with anything that might influence them. Good quality booze was one of the most highly prized commodities, especially during Prohibition. Buchalter approached his good friend Charlie Luciano who, in turn, passed him on to Lucchese.

The two men clicked immediately and Buchalter soon had Lucchese working alongside him. Before long, there was access to another innovation that would lead to greater involvement of the Mob into the area. The new season's offerings in the garment business required huge amounts of short-term capital, not always easily accessible from traditional banking sources. Lucchese had the answer -- loan-sharking.

Loan-sharking consists simply of lending money at rates higher than the legally permitted limit, at times as high as twenty percent per week. The President’s Commission on Organized Crime in 1967 stated that the business is in “the multi-billion dollar range.” The three main ingredients in successfully running this business are -- customers, capital and methods of collection. The Mob had all three, and has used this formula with great skill over the last sixty years.

What Thomas Lucchese introduced into the Garment District in the early 1930’s was a crime tool of great effect that was still being used over thirty years later by one of his successors, Anthony Corallo. The only difference was that while Lucchese was corrupting and manipulating an industry, Corallo went straight for the jugular, into the office of the Mayor of New York.