Early protection was a generalist group function, not a specialist role.

Evidence

It is not easy to ascertain the exact relationship of these groups to the mafia, and scholars are at a loss when it comes to answering this question. They were conglomerates—a mixture of cartels, unions, and syndicates—which for a variety of reasons benefited from protection, either by supplying it or by making use of it. It seems probable that in more primitive cases the protection role was collectively discharged rather than handled on a specialized basis. Moreover, it is not clear whether the mafioso was always in the same profession as his proteges. There are cases in which members were all in the same business, or their businesses were all in economically related fields. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 221

Categorization

• QUESTION: The primitive ‘collectively discharged’ protection phase prefigures the division of labor Gambetta later claims generated the specialized mafia protection industry — worth chasing the account of this transition.
• XREF: This is a market-evolution precursor to Gambetta’s later argument about the professionalization of violence, parallel to the Diamond District’s shift from cooperative extralegal norms to formal arbitration.