The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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made certain that the other fellow got his share of profit. Nobody lost. He did this, of 
course, by obvious means. Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free 
competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that 
efficient monopoly. There were some oil wholesalers is Brooklyn, men of fiery temper, 
headstrong, not amenable to reason, who refused to see, to recognize, the vision of Vito 
Corleone, even after he had explained everything to them with the utmost patience and 
detail. With these men Vito Corleone threw up his hands is despair and sent Tessio to 
Brooklyn to set up a headquarters and solve the problem. Warehouses were burned, 
truckloads of olive-green oil were dumped to form lakes in the cobbled waterfront 
streets. One rash man, an arrogant Milanese with more faith in the police than a saint 
has in Christ, actually went to the authorities with a complaint against his fellow Italians, 
breaking the ten-century-old law, of omerta. But before the matter could progress any 
further the wholesaler disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving behind, deserted, 
his devoted wife and three children, who, God be thanked, were fully grown and capable 
of taking over his business and coming to terms with the Genco Pura oil company. 
But great men are not born great, they grow great, and so it was with Vito Corleone. 
When prohibition came to pass and alcohol forbidden to be sold, Vito Corleone made 
the final step from a quite ordinary, somewhat ruthless businessman to a great Don in 
the world of criminal enterprise. It did not happen in a day, it did not happen in a year, 
but by the end of the Prohibition period and the start of the Great Depression, Vito 
Corleone had become the Godfather, the Don, Don Corleone. 
It started casually enough. By this time the Genco Pura Oil Company had a fleet of six 
delivery trucks. Through Clemenza, Vito Corleone was approached by a group of Italian 
bootleggers who smuggled alcohol and whiskey in from Canada. They needed trucks 
and deliverymen to distribute their produce over New York City. They needed 
deliverymen who were reliable, discreet and of a certain determination and force. They 
were willing to pay Vito Corleone for his trucks and for his men. The fee was so 
enormous that Vito Corleone cut back drastically on his oil business to use the trucks 
almost exclusively for the service of the bootlegger-smugglers. This despite the fact that 
these gentlemen had accompanied their offer with a silky threat. But even then Vito 
Carleone was so mature a man that he did not take insult at a threat or become angry 
and refuse a profitable offer because of it. He evaluated the threat, found it lacking in 
conviction, and lowered his opinion of his new partners because they had been so 
stupid to use threats where none were needed. This was useful information to be 

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