You have made the distinction between the "Robin Hood" old Mafiosi and the scumbags in "Cosa Mia" today. Since you cite Wikipedia and your contributions to it, here are two excerpts from Wikipedia about the "old" Mafia in the US:

"Vito Cascio Ferro (January 22, 1862 - 1943), known as Don Vito, was a prominent Sicilian mafioso who also operated for a time in the United States, where he was a "pioneer" of sorts in the American Mafia. He was known for pioneering a new technique of extortion by the mafia within the Italian communities of Sicily and America where by businessmen would not be extorted for large sums of money at any given time that could possibly bankrupt them, instead they would be coerced into paying smaller sums on a regular basis that would not break them or put them out of business. This was known as the pizzu, named after the small beak of a bird and the mafia saying, to wet the beak as it applies to the extortion of money."

Don Vito spent several years in NYC in the first decade of the 20th Century. His purpose was to organize the loosely knit Sicilian underworld into what eventually became the Five Families, and to set up a heroin pipeline from Sicily to NYC. I don't infer any benevolence in his extortion and coercion.

The Matranga family of New Orleans is generaly considered to be the first US Mafia family. Here's what Wikipedia says about them:

Born Carlo and Antonio Matranga in Sicily, the brothers immigrated to the United States with their family and settled in New Orleans during the 1870s where they eventually opened a saloon and brothel. Using their business as a base of operations, the Matranga brothers began establishing lucrative organized criminal activities including extortion and labor racketeering. Receiving tribute payments from Italian laborers and dockworkers, as well as from the rival Provenzano crime family (who held a near monopoly of commercial shipping from South American fruit shipments), they eventually began moving in on Provenzano fruit loading operations intimidating the Provenzanos with threats of violence.

"Protecting" workers and shopkeepers? Or extorting them?