Devil's Bargain

Hankering after a larger share of the New York City chicken market, Frank Perdue found he had little choice but to deal with mobsters. He agreed to supply birds to Dial Poultry, a distributing company owned by sons of Gambino Family Crime Boss Paul Castellano, the Mob chieftain who was gunned down in midtown Manhattan last December. Perdue knew with whom he was dealing. Later he turned to Castellano, unsuccessfully, for assistance in easing labor troubles in Virginia. "They (the Mafia) have long tentacles," the poultry producer testified last September before the President's Commission on Organized Crime. "I figured he may be able to help."

Perdue's dealings with hoodlums are detailed, along with dozens of other examples of racketeers' roles in the fabric of American business, in a 1,000- page report released by the commission last week. The document shows how the Mob controls unions and attracts legitimate businessmen, like Perdue, who decide that "doing business with organized crime . . . may provide them with a competitive edge."

While much of the report covers familiar ground--rehashing Justice Department evidence that organized crime runs unions for longshoremen, hotel and restaurant workers, teamsters and laborers--it goes on to show sleaze everywhere. "Throughout the economy," the commission states, "organized crime distorts costs through theft, extortion, bribery, price fixing and restraint of trade." Consumers often pay "what amounts to a surcharge" to the Mafia in crime-controlled industries, the report states. New York City's construction business is dominated by the Mob; of 94 building projects surveyed, 87% bought overpriced concrete from just two Mob-related companies, even though the area offers 26 suppliers. The commission urged the Administration to develop a "national strategy" against organized crime. Merely jailing mobsters has not broken their power over the marketplace, the panel says. By the beginning of 1982, some 113 New Jersey longshoremen had been convicted of racketeering, but most of those same players, or their successors, are back on the scene. Furthermore, federal prosecutors are just starting to make use of long-enacted criminal conspiracy laws. In one of the first such cases, six reputed members of the Gambino crime family were found guilty last week of running a car-theft ring. Castellano, of course, had been convicted earlier by a different kind of jury.