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Jacob Shapiro
Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro (May 5, 1899 – June 9, 1947) (also known as Charles Shapiro, Morris Friedman, Samuel Dishouse, and Samuel Disnahusen) was a New York mobster who, with his partner Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, dominated labor racketeering in the garment industry in New York for two decades and led the Murder, Inc. organization.
Jacob Shapiro was born either "around 1895" or in 1896 or 1897 or 1899 in either Minsk or Odesa. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1907 or thereabouts.
Growing up in the Lower East Side section of New York City, Shapiro teamed up with Lepke Buchalter to engage in shakedowns of pushcart peddlers; Shapiro allegedly got his nickname "Gurrah" from those peddlers' shouts of "Gerrarah here, Jake" (Get out of here, Jake). Shapiro and Lepke soon graduated to grand larceny, for which both were sent to Sing Sing prison in 1917.
In the early 1920s, after their release from prison, Shapiro and Buchalter went into the business of labor racketeering in the garment industry. Buchalter served as the brains and Shapiro provided the muscle in an alliance that lasted for decades.
They began, like their predecessors, by providing "muscle" to either employers or unions during strikes, working for Jacob Orgen, who had previously wrested control of this racket from Nathan Kaplan in the decade-long Labor Slugger Wars. After working for Orgen for a while, Buchalter and Shapiro, sometimes called simply "L&G" (short for Lepke and Gurrah) started planning to take over his operations. Realizing that L&G posed a threat, Orgen allied himself with brothers Eddie and Jack "Legs" Diamond.
Shapiro and Buchalter soon made their move. On October 15, 1927, Orgen and Jack Diamond were standing on the corner of Delancey and Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side. Two gunmen (thought to be Shapiro and Buchalter) drove up to the corner. One gunman got out of the car and started shooting while the driver began shooting from inside the car. Orgen was killed instantly and Jack Diamond was severely wounded.
With Orgen's death, Shapiro and Buchalter took over his labor racketeering operation. Buchalter and Shapiro then moved toward establishing a larger and more enduring role in the Garment District by using intimidation, ranging from threats of violence to murder, to infiltrate garment unions, which enabled them to siphon dues from those local unions.
That in turn gave them the ability to extort payoffs from employers, either in return for allowing them to remain nonunion or as the price of entering into "sweetheart contracts" or avoiding a strike. When they had acquired a dominant enough position in a particular segment of the garment industry they could then proceed to organize the employers into protective associations, extracting payoffs disguised as membership fees from those companies they had coerced into joining and driving their competitors out of business.
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Jacob Shapiro
Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro (May 5, 1899 – June 9, 1947) (also known as Charles Shapiro, Morris Friedman, Samuel Dishouse, and Samuel Disnahusen) was a New York mobster who, with his partner Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, dominated labor racketeering in the garment industry in New York for two decades and led the Murder, Inc. organization.
Jacob Shapiro was born either "around 1895" or in 1896 or 1897 or 1899 in either Minsk or Odesa. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1907 or thereabouts.
Growing up in the Lower East Side section of New York City, Shapiro teamed up with Lepke Buchalter to engage in shakedowns of pushcart peddlers; Shapiro allegedly got his nickname "Gurrah" from those peddlers' shouts of "Gerrarah here, Jake" (Get out of here, Jake). Shapiro and Lepke soon graduated to grand larceny, for which both were sent to Sing Sing prison in 1917.
In the early 1920s, after their release from prison, Shapiro and Buchalter went into the business of labor racketeering in the garment industry. Buchalter served as the brains and Shapiro provided the muscle in an alliance that lasted for decades.
They began, like their predecessors, by providing "muscle" to either employers or unions during strikes, working for Jacob Orgen, who had previously wrested control of this racket from Nathan Kaplan in the decade-long Labor Slugger Wars. After working for Orgen for a while, Buchalter and Shapiro, sometimes called simply "L&G" (short for Lepke and Gurrah) started planning to take over his operations. Realizing that L&G posed a threat, Orgen allied himself with brothers Eddie and Jack "Legs" Diamond.
Shapiro and Buchalter soon made their move. On October 15, 1927, Orgen and Jack Diamond were standing on the corner of Delancey and Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side. Two gunmen (thought to be Shapiro and Buchalter) drove up to the corner. One gunman got out of the car and started shooting while the driver began shooting from inside the car. Orgen was killed instantly and Jack Diamond was severely wounded.
With Orgen's death, Shapiro and Buchalter took over his labor racketeering operation. Buchalter and Shapiro then moved toward establishing a larger and more enduring role in the Garment District by using intimidation, ranging from threats of violence to murder, to infiltrate garment unions, which enabled them to siphon dues from those local unions.
That in turn gave them the ability to extort payoffs from employers, either in return for allowing them to remain nonunion or as the price of entering into "sweetheart contracts" or avoiding a strike. When they had acquired a dominant enough position in a particular segment of the garment industry they could then proceed to organize the employers into protective associations, extracting payoffs disguised as membership fees from those companies they had coerced into joining and driving their competitors out of business.