State security failure motivated peasants to pay for private armed escorts

Evidence

It had become demonstrably clear to most villagers that if they valued public security, it would have to come about through their own efforts… This situation provided the incentive for Mariano Ardena to organize, among members of the Catholic circle he headed, a group of two armed individuals to escort, at a price, villagers taking wheat to the mill… This venture soon became a successful going concern. By 1900 it was expanded into a barter system. Villagers no longer needed to go to the distant mill. For a modest fee, they could exchange wheat for flour without leaving the Camporano area… — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 238

Categorization

• XREF: Direct confirmation of the Gambetta model the reader is testing: state failure triggers a private protection market with credible-commitment pricing through an escort-for-wheat-fee transaction.
• QUESTION: The barter-system expansion from escort to exchange is an interesting escalation — does the protection now cover milling itself, and is this where Ardena learns the milling-market oligopoly?