How the Mafia started.

Imagine a school playground, all the kids are playing together and having fun. Then a group of bullies come and bully some of the kids. The kids then go tell the teachers but the teachers don't do anything and just ignore it. So the kids that got bullied want to do something about this so they form a group(the Mafia) to stop the bullies and prevent others from showing up.

These kids start the Mafia to stop the bullies because the teachers won't do anything about them. So one of the Mafia members gets beat up by a group of bullies. The Mafia believe that since they are protecting the other kids from the bullies that the kids owe them money so the Mafia can buy band-aids for injured Mafia members. Every time a bully shows up, the kids owe the Mafia money.

So for a while now there haven't been any bullies so the kids believe they don't need to pay the Mafia anymore. The Mafia doesn't like this so they bully the kids into giving them money.

So that is the base of the Mafia and how it started. Eventually the Mafia began to do other services such as smuggling. Then other people started their own Mafia groups.

Here is a quote from one the classic movies "Goodfellas ".

All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. And that's what it's all about. That's what the FBI could never understand. That what Paulie and the organization [i.e. the Mafia] does is offer protection for people who can't go to the cops. That's it. That's all it is. They're like the police department for wiseguys.