The “system” had long gone unchallenged, but Matheson saw it as the underlying barrier to her fight to secure worker rights. To confront the corruption, she selected a polling site at the heart of Bufalino’s territory, sending a Pittston woman named Carmella Salatino to the polls on election day. Salatino refused to sign the election roster unless she could cast her own vote privately, with her husband standing by in support outside the booth. With Matheson’s encouragement, the Salatinos stood their ground for hours against the pressure of Bufalino’s “poll-watchers.” They ultimately backed down, but they had made a crucial first step toward change, and it would not be long before Matheson and the women workers of Pittston overcame voter suppression in the town. Later, through efforts like 1958’s Dress Strike, ILGWU members asserted the union’s control over Pennsylvania’s garment industry, and mob-controlled businesses diminished in power.

Matheson’s career with the ILGWU extended from the 1940s to the 1960s, and she frequently combated organized crime interests in the region’s notoriously corrupt towns, alternately fighting against and negotiating with gangsters. Matheson learned the dangers of fighting the mob through personal experience; one of her brothers, Will Lurye, was murdered while trying to organize a mobbed-up firm in New York’s Garment District. Yet she was an idealist, and while she has become best known for facing off against the mob, Matheson’s primary importance to the labor movement lies in the inspiration she gave to workers she led, and the way she changed attitudes among working-class women of Pittston like Carmella Salatino—turning them into a powerful political force in the region and a respected civic presence. Her gutsy leadership style and unwavering fight for the ideals of organized labor brought a transformative vision of union power to an unlikely corner of America where tradition held sway, and women seldom got a voice.

Matheson, second from left, with family, at the district attorney’s office after the investigation of her brother Will Lurye’s murder by the mob. Matheson faced off against gangsters throughout her long career as a union organizer. Courtesy of the Queens Public Library Archives.

In the early 20th century, Northeastern Pennsylvania was a region of small, often isolated townships that had been populated by waves of immigrants who had come to work in the coal mines. For decades the mines had thrived, but by the mid-1940s the coal industry was flagging, leaving families mired in long-term unemployment. Non-union garment factories emerged as an economic lifeline for a desperate workforce of miners’ wives and daughters, who worked long hours under poor conditions, with no recourse and no representation. The workers’ poverty created rich opportunities for garment contractors from New York, some with familial mob ties, who flocked to Pennsylvania for competitive advantage where they could undercut the industry’s wage rates and evade union oversight. This environment, plus very low overhead for entry, presented an opening for mobsters to extend their operations beyond New York and to secure a legitimate front for other illegal activities. The ILGWU sought to stabilize this volatile industry through the enforcement of uniform compensation and working conditions, and it sent Matheson to organize these “runaway” shops.

Matheson was a born organizer who knew she needed to earn trust to organize garment workers, and that she would need to demonstrate the value of the union to their lives, and not just their livelihoods. To unionize would require courage and defiance from many of these women; attitudes in Northeastern Pennsylvania were provincial and patriarchal. “The men had no jobs,” said Dorothy Ney, who worked with Matheson as an organizer. “They were out hanging around Main Street while the women worked.” But though the women were the breadwinners, they were still seen primarily as the caretakers of their households, and their male family members were not always tolerant of their union involvement. Union women who followed Matheson’s lead were subject to demeaning and vulgar verbal attacks, as well as physical threat. In the early days of Matheson’s tenure, husbands and fathers often yanked women right out of the picket lines, and hauled them back home. Organizing these workers required upending long-term patterns of subjugation that reached into the civic, economic, and familial aspects of a woman’s life.

These women’s political realities bore little resemblance to the ideals of American democracy that Matheson upheld, and showed why targeting voting abuses became one of her first efforts. For Matheson, one’s right to vote was an underlying principle of social democratic unionism—an ideal that emphasized workers’ political and economic rights. Whether recruiting workers to the union cause or dressing down a made member of the mob challenging her at the picket-line, she often delivered what she called “her little lecture on democracy.” In it, she held that the electoral process was an essential precursor to establishing democracy in all aspects of a working person’s life. “Having the right to vote doesn’t make it democratic,” she insisted, telling women they also had to exercise that right, and to push for justice at work. “If you don’t have a labor union or you don’t have an organization to represent you on the job, you’re really being denied your rights, your democratic rights.”

The Pittston voting gambit was a crucial first step that put the community and the local mob leadership on notice, and demonstrated Matheson’s fearlessness and solidarity with the rank-and-file. An outsider from Chicago, Matheson grew up in a fiercely progressive household with a union activist father who had his own violent encounters with thugs and racketeers. All seven Lurye children attended Socialist Sunday School, and young Min often joined her father at union rallies. Her parents frequently sheltered radicals in their home, including Emma Goldman. Matheson’s mother became adept at deflecting police searches during the inevitable raids on their home. “Dad wouldn’t work at anything, I don’t care what it was, without getting others who were also doing the same thing together,” Matheson later recalled.

It was an active, politically engaged climate, and Matheson developed a deep commitment to social justice during her youth. She became a zealous member of the Young Workers’ Communist League, where she met her life partner Bill Matheson—though the Mathesons both broke with the Communist Party when they saw Soviet interests superseding the interests of the American workers they organized. That, and her brother’s murder, distilled her shrewd assessment of ideologues and authority, and galvanized her personal sense of justice.

Matheson’s direct experience with personal loss in the fight for labor was highly relatable to the women of the coal region. Oral histories from the women who organized with Min show that they felt her deep commitment to their cause, and they treasured their hard-won status. Many recalled their time in the union as life-changing, and imbued with purpose. They never wanted to go back to the days of “no representation, no protections,” and they often spoke of Matheson’s courage and loyalty. “If we didn’t have somebody like Min Matheson with us, I believe we would have given up because she was so strong and she was down there with us,” Minnie Caputo, who joined Matheson’s organizing team and helped fight the mob in Pittston, told an interviewer. “We knew when we were in a shop how she fought for every girl and you weren’t gonna give all that up. It would be foolish for us after she fought so hard.”

And they refused to go backward. The ILGWU’s Northeast District grew from 404 members in 1944 to 11,000 by the late 1950s, with more than 250 union factories. As representatives of their shops, a growing number of elected chairladies and secretaries flocked to the union’s monthly meetings. “They loved to hear Min talk,” Ney said. “Whatever she believed in, they believed in.” And Matheson’s ILGWU, with Bill Matheson as director of education, cultivated active political and civic engagement. Union members took on leadership roles on the shop floor, joined school boards, and participated in local democratic party politics. In 1957, Pittston’s mayor instituted a “Garment Workers’ Day” to recognize their contributions to the community.

Matheson’s leadership transformed oppressed garment workers into constructive members of society, with status and dignity. The ILGWU Northeast District’s educational and recreational programs supported local charity drives and created a union newsletter and a radio program, which—typically written by Bill—were notable for their candor, humor, and accessibility. Matheson launched a mobile healthcare unit that traveled throughout the region to serve the needs of the union’s more remote members—the first of its kind. And, to enhance the public perception of the union and provide a creative outlet for members, the Mathesons formed a highly popular chorus, which performed to audiences in venues throughout the area. These activities were guided by principles of community engagement and empowerment—Matheson understood that her members would gain good standing in the community by becoming a visible and vocal presence invested in contributing to the common good.

After Matheson’s retirement, she lived on a meager union pension and sought to rejoin the ILGWU to organize part-time, hoping to help train a new generation of union activists. The ILGWU did not accept the idea, however, and Matheson died in 1992. Now, in 2020, only about 8 percent of the private sector workforce in the U.S. is represented by organized labor and the vast majority of workers lack the union-won protections Matheson championed. Matheson observed this diminishment in the ILGWU as early as 1988. “I feel that a union has to be constantly on its toes and force conditions to see that the employers live up to their agreement, and the girls have pride in their organization. Otherwise the whole concept of unionism just withers and dies, and I wouldn’t want to see that,” she reflected in a 1983 interview.

We now see the impact of the long neglect and decline of union power today in the challenges faced by workers, and front-line workers in particular, during the COVID-19 crisis. With decades of complacency toward worker protections on full view today, it’s time for a return to Min Matheson’s empowering message, and to reclaim the rights she and her members fought so hard to achieve.

The post The Woman Who Faced Down the Mob and Championed a Union appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

After Gotti was sentenced to life in prison in 1992, the FBI did their best to trace all the money funneled through the Gambino crime family. There was far less than they thought. As FBI field office head James Fox put it, “Gotti and the others spent a lot on drinking, gambling, and girlfriends.” Much of that, no doubt, went to bottles of Louis XIII.

The tie between booze and gangsters has been around since the early 1900s, when mobsters started using dark and dingy bars to plot their crimes and hang out with fellow underworld denizens. But it was Prohibition that really cemented the relationship. In the 1920s, gangsters became the main suppliers of illicit booze—whiskey and scotch from Canada and Europe, rum from Cuba, and homemade moonshine form rural operations across the country. Prohibition gave the underworld the financial clout to extend their influence into politics and coalesce a national criminal syndicate.

Post-Prohibition, many mobsters who made their fortune with bootleg liquor plied their ill-gotten funds into liquor distributorships, stores, breweries, and state beverage commissions to control liquor licenses. Most of all, they bought bars—lots of them. As former Gambino crime family associate John Alite said, “Wiseguys look for attention. A good mob bar is where they have a hook and know everybody.” Bars also served a useful cash-laundering purpose.

Among gangsters, scotch and whiskey were always popular choices, particularly the whiskey brand Cutty Sark. And they had their own way of ordering, as recounted by undercover FBI agent Jack Garcia: “Mobsters always order drinks by a brand. Never just a scotch and water, it would be a Cutty and water. And no one ever drank out of a straw. That was a big no-no. Mobsters would always get free drinks, but loved to tip extravagantly, so the drinks would end up costing more just because of their big tips. But for a wiseguy it didn’t matter. To them the best drink is the one you get for free.”

For all the time wiseguys spent in bars, and for the decades of their ties to the industry, it was inevitable that cocktails would bear their name. Here are four major gangsters in American history and the cocktails named after them.

Al Capone, the most famous American gangster.

Al Capone

Few gangsters loom larger in American history, and pop culture, than Al Capone. Though he reigned over the Chicago underworld for only seven years, from 1925 to 1932, he managed to turn his swagger and media savvy into gangland celebrity, hobnobbing with politicians, judges, movie stars, singers, stage actors, and baseball players. During Prohibition, liquor made his empire and his fortune. It also made him the target of law enforcement and one of the first mob bosses to catch the attention of the federal government.

For his own consumption, Capone was reported to prefer Manhattans; whiskey was a popular bootleg alcohol in Chicagoland. He would have his drinks, and listen to the top jazz acts of the day at The Green Mill, a historic Chicago lounge. There’s a booth, facing the stage on the right hand side, that the bar’s staff call the Capone booth. Whenever he was there, no one could come in or leave the Mill.

The Al Capone Cocktail

Saveur magazine printed this recipe, from Brooklyn bartender John Bush. The Al Capone is a close cousin to the Boulevardier.

3 oz. rye whiskey
1½ oz. vermouth
½ oz. Campari
Orange zest, to garnish

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake the whiskey, vermouth, and Campari. Strain the mixture into two tumblers, and garnish each with an orange twist.

Meyer Lansky

Despite his nickname, the “Little Man,” Meyer Lansky was a huge figure in organized crime history. A Jewish émigré from Poland, Lansky grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with little formal schooling. He quickly attached himself to gangs of Jewish and Italian racketeers, who were active in the underworld during Prohibition. Lansky started running gambling operations, and eventually owned casinos in pre-Castro Cuba and the Bahamas, as well as financial interests in Las Vegas casinos, like the Flamingo.

According to his daughter, Sandi Lansky, Meyer favored scotch, specifically Dewar’s. Scotch was a perennial favorite drink for many gangsters, and Dewar’s has long been one of the most popular whiskeys in the United States, especially during the post-World World II era.

Though Lanksy preferred his drinks straight, his name inspired a few modern cocktails, including this one found on the menu of the DGS Delicatessen, in Washington, D.C.

The Meyer Lansky Sour

2 oz. gin
1 ½ oz. Meyer lemon juice
1 dash orange bitters
Simple syrup

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass.

Lucky Luciano

Lucky Luciano was the archetypical 1930s-era gangster. He’s often cited as one of the influential figures in the development of modern organized crime—not only for his criminal exploits, but for his style. Wearing sharp suits, Luciano was one of the architects of the Mafia Commission and led one of the NYC Mafia’s five families.

But he was noticeably different from his peers in one way. “Despite the fact he and his pals made millions off of Prohibition liquor, it seems Charlie was not a particularly ‘big’ drinker himself,” says author Christian Cipollini.

Lucky’s Manhattan

In 2011, Basil Hayden’s Bourbon worked with HBO to develop signature cocktails inspired by the show Boardwalk Empire.

1½ oz. Basil Hayden’s Bourbon
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. dry vermouth
½ oz. maple syrup
2 dashes of bitters

Stir together bourbon, sweet and dry vermouth, maple syrup, and bitters over ice in a glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Santo Trafficante, Jr.

The mob in Tampa was never as large as its counterparts in the Northeast and Midwest. But despite its small size, the Trafficantes, Florida’s only Mafia family, controlled a vast swath of the Sunshine State and extended its tentacles into pre-Castro Cuba, under the tutelage of Santo Trafficante, Jr. Unlike Capone or Gotti, Trafficante was quiet and unassuming. He ran the Tampa family for more than 30 years, owned and operated casinos in Havana, and was highly respected by Mafia bosses around the country.

The Santo Trafficante Cocktail

Though it doesn’t contain the Florida don’s favorite scotch, J&B, this cocktail from New York-based Prohibition Distillers has a Sunshine State feel to it because of its the layered orange flavors.

3 oz. orange-infused Bootlegger vodka
1 oz. blood orange puree
1 oz. fresh orange juice
Dash of Campari

Shake the ingredients in a shaker with ice until well blended. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with an orange twist.

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