The most important day in most mobsters life, the day 
they get made and become a full memberof La Cosa Nostra.

This ceremony is usually done in the basement of a fellow 
mobsters house. 
At a table in the basement sit the boss, underboss, consigliere, 
and some capos of the family.

The mobster is told that this is a secret society and there is one 
way in and one way out. You come in on your feet and you go 
out in a coffin. 

That this thing of ours is to be what comes first in your life,
it comes before your blood family. 

If their mother was on a death bed and you where called for, 
would you come? Or if we asked you to kill your own brother, would you? 
 If so which finger would you use to pull the trigger with. 

The mobsters sponser would then prick that finger until blood 
came out. The blood would then be put on a picture of a saint
 and the picture placed in the hands of the wiseguy. Then the 
boss lights the picture on fire and while the wiseguy juggles it in 
his hand the boss sais:
If you divulged the secrets of our life your soul will burn in 
hell like this saint. Then the now made guy kisses everybody on 
both cheeks.

Sometimes they do what is called a tie-in. This is when 
everybody holds hands and the boss (in Italian) says, 
"In honor of our brotherhood, I untie the knot," and 
everybody lets go. The the new made guy stands and 
joins hands in the circle and again the boss says, 
"In honor of our brotherhood, I tie the knot." 
The new member is told some rules and regulations and is on his way.

In Sicily there is the Sicilian Mafia. In the 70's and 80's the Sicilian Mafia and La Cosa Nostra worked together in the National heroin trade. Recently the Sicilian Mafia has been linked to the highest levels of the Italian government.
A good book about the Sicilian Mafia is, Midnight In Sicily.

In Italy there is the Ndrangheta. Unlike the Sicilian and American mafia its families are based on blood relationships.

Here in the U.S. there are other ethnic criminal groups, of course they are not as powerful as the Italians.
There is the russian mob.
There was or maybe still is the greek mob based in Astoria, Queens, they distributed illegal Joker Poker machines and ran horse rooms and a lucrative dice game. For years, they had paid the Lucchese family $10,000 a month for the right to operate on their turf.
But none of these are as powerful or as organized as La Cosa Nostra and have to pay off the Cosa Nostra families to operate on there turf