The Atlantic City Conference held in 1930 was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and it held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate.
Some historians believe that representation at the conference was not representative of the ethnic make-up of the US criminal element, being that the delegations consisted of mostly Italian and Jewish crime leaders. Because of the lack of a substantial Irish delegation, a conclusion was made that this could have been the beginning of underworld domination by Italian and Jewish crime groups. The Irish still possessed an influential presence in America's criminal and political worlds and had a number of dominant crime leaders in New York, Boston and Philadelphia that were not invited and eliminated soon afterward, leading some to believe it was decided the Irish were to be left on the fringes of the underworld.
Crime leaders at the conference allegedly discussed the violent bootleg wars in New York and Chicago, systematic elimination of various Irish-American gangsters presently dominating underworld activities and influencing politics in the largest cities across US, diversification and investment into legal liquor ventures, expansion of illegal operations to offset profit loss from the probable repeal of Prohibition, and reorganization and consolidation of the underworld into a National Crime Syndicate.
Read more about Atlantic City Conference: The Conference, The Future of Organized Crime, Atlantic City Delegates
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic, city and/or conference:
“Tell [the next Miss America] she is taking on a great responsibility. A responsibility to herself, to her people, to the Miss American Pageant, the people of Atlantic City, her state and her nation. Tell her the country and the world will judge America by her.”
—Colleen Kay Hutchins (b. c. 1932)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (18981936)
“Politics is still the mans game. The women are allowed to do the chores, the dirty work, and now and thenbut only occasionallyone is present at some secret conference or other. But its not the rule. They can go out and get the vote, if they can and will; they can collect money, they can be grateful for being permitted to work. But that is all.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (18761958)