The Invention of the Necktie by Isidore (Izzy) Abrahami (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📖

the name of Alfonso Faber.
FNMBS, our affiliate investigative group of New York, has conducted a thorough research of the original fish-nibbled rope of Mr. Faber, which involved new scientific methods such as parasite research, pollen analysis, (C14) CT scanning, DNA analysis, etc., which confirms the findings published in this paper beyond a reasonable doubt.
The remains of the original Alfonso Faber and his fish-nibbled and broken rope around his neck, can be seen in the Provincial Museum of Drenthe, in Holland.
For the next four hundred and sixty years the politicians' practice in electing a new "Saint Alfonso Faber", once the previous one had passed away, stayed intact. Their principle in choosing a new Saint was that he should look pretty much the same as the original one, and that he shouldn't be public-shy. After all the constant tax flow into the politicians' pockets depended on his encounters with as many people as possible.
On Dec. 28, 1561 something extraordinary happened which was to put one of the final touches, and give the last conclusive push to the invention of the necktie, as we know it today.
On that day the official Saint Alfonso Faber XXIII, a miller's son, was helping his father in grinding grain with the rotating millstones. In a fateful accident, his traditional broken rope which he was wearing around his neck got caught in between the millstones and was flattened.
In a terrible panic for ruining the shape of the Holy Rope, Alfonso Faber, a genuine and simple man, hid in the mountains.
Here we have to note that the statement issued on Father's day of 1993, by the secret club of the world's politicians: "Krawatten und Konformismen GmbH" in Berlin, places this day (Dec. 28, 1561) as the day the necktie was invented.
We have to point out that this statement is erroneous. The necktie has never been invented, nor found. In an astounding parallelism, it evolved with the evolution of the politician.
The disappearance of Saint Alfonso Faber made most of the European population happy, at least for a short time; they were freed of paying the Neck-Rope Tax which, as always, exceeded their meager earnings.
As if collectively agreed, no one blew the whistle on the vanishing of Saint Alfonso Faber. It was probably the first silent mass protest in the annals of Mankind.
The first politician who discovered that something has gone wrong was Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, nine months later.
We don't have sufficient evidence to put the blame on anyone for the Duke's discovery. We can only assume that he started to suspect something when he checked his balance sheet and found out that his profits were diminishing considerably.
All at once, tens of soldiers were dispatched to search the mill of Alfonso Faber's father in the tiny German village of Krefeld.
Within an hour, to everyone's astonishment, the flattened rope of Saint Alfonso Faber was found.
That same day, the Duke called for an urgent and secret conference which took place in Krefeld's town-hall and was attended by most of the European politicians of the time.
The minutes of this conference were found intact in among the "necktie files". They suggest that the first day was spent in deciding whether to kill all of Europe's millers, or to abolish the rights of people to buy flour or bread.
On the second day, a foxy looking politician by the name of John Calvin, who in some years would become one of the most tyrannical visionaries of Europe, had a vision. Holding the flattened rope high above his head he declared:
"For us to control the whole tax-paying population through one person, is more difficult than to control every tax payer through all tax payers!"
This stunning declaration revolutionized the political thinking of the times and probably for all times to come.
Minutes after Calvin's declaration, a new law was established.
It directed the twenty thousand three hundred and fifty four regional tax authorities in Europe to start manufacturing flattened pieces of rope which had to have a design of symbols printed on them. Those were to tell the length of time for which the individual has paid his taxes.
Every male was ordered to purchase from the tax authorities a flattened piece of rope with the appropriate symbols on it representing the period for which he had paid his taxes.
The decree also forced each male to wear the flattened piece of rope around his neck at all times "in order to show the community his honest character in fulfilling his civic duties in paying his taxes."
Saint Alfonso Faber was excommunicated and an edict against him became effective.
Inspired by one of his most spirited visions, John Calvin concluded the conference with the words which were to become the politicians' secret dictum for generations to come:

WITH DEAD DESIRE THEY BOTH WON'T DIE;
THE SILVER LINK, THE SILKEN TIE,
WHICH HEART TO HEART AND MIND TO MIND,
IN BODY AND IN SOUL CAN BIND. *

The new law caught the tax authorities by surprise. At first they employed tens of thousands of women to weave the flattened pieces of rope with the varied number of stripes. Each stripe told that the wearer has paid his tax for one month. But with the passage of time, and with the introduction of automatization, the tax authorities began building machine-equipped factories for the production of, what would became known as, the Neck Tax-Tie.
This law of the Neck Tax-Tie turned out to be one of the most conceited and sophisticated pieces of legislation ever to be concocted by the politicians of the period.
It forced every male to buy his own neck tax-tie for a price that exceeded the cost of production by 203%. (See the Necktie Files, document 19001/5, page 3211).
But, cleverly, it also offered incentives to those who would pay their tax for a whole year in advance.
They could buy, for 7% less of the original price, only one neck tax-tie per year with twelve stripes set on it representing twelve months of paid tax. Those who couldn't afford to pay their tax one year in advance had to buy a new neck tax-tie with the appropriate number of stripes, each time they paid their taxes. In addition they were required to pay 15% more for each extra stripe.
*Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), rewrote these lines years later.

The ingenious scheme of John Calvin and the rest of the politicians in associating the ungratifying tax with the gratifying piece of attire, succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.
With the beginning of the new century, (1600) the tax-tie became the pride of every man in Europe. By wearing it, men indicated that in paying their dues, they could be counted among the honest and dutiful members of society. And not only that. Those who wore the twelve-stripe tax-tie exhibited their wealth by demonstrating that they were able to pay their tax one year in advance.
We've found remnants of society clubs from this period which carried names such as "The two-stripe gentry association" or "The seven-stripe fraternity club". The evidence shows that those mushroomed in every part of Europe and divided the population into unbridgeable class clusters.
At this time, men began working longer hours and much harder in order to be able to pay the maximum amount of taxes, a thing which enabled them to buy a tax-tie with as many stripes as possible and by doing so, reach the upper classes of society.
The massive evidence we've uncovered points out that one hundred and sixty years later, on September 4, 1761, the neck tax-tie, helped by the calculated political manipulations of people's fears and beliefs, had finally came on its own.
On this date, at exactly 18:00 hours, the first contest for the "Necktie Man of the Year" was conducted in the German town of Koln and was dedicated to the memory of the first and the immortal Saint Alfonso Faber. The winner was the British Sir Edward Milos who wore a blue twelve-stripe necktie.
Even so, we have to disagree with the contentions of many research groups which claim that the precise moment in which the Neck Tax-Tie became the final version of the Necktie, was Sep. 4, 1761 at exactly 6:00 o'clock P.M..
Our disagreement is based on scores of top secret documents which we purchased from eleven of the world's principal politicians for a skyscraping price which, for reasons that lie in the domain of the Capital Gain Tax, we're unable to disclose.
The evidence found in these documents features one of the most guarded covert operations in modern times and depicts the next astonishing metamorphoses of the necktie.
The publication of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", on Dec. 25, 1867, jolted the political establishment and inflamed the current politicians.
With no exception all of them agreed with Marx's premise, which maintained that the course of history is determined by economic factors, and not by the creative, artistic or the intellectual genius of the human being.
Within hours they called for an urgent meeting.
Three days later, on Dec. 28, 1867, the meeting took place in the palace of Versailles.
The mood of the conference was depressed. Things were not going as they should.
The majority of the population was cheating on their taxes and the money wasn't flowing in as before. Many citizens were forging their own striped neck tax-ties, and the politicians were beginning to recognize that they had to find new ways of enlarging their own personal riches.
What was even worse was the leaking of "State secrets" which, like in our day, meant the disclosure of the politicians' embezzlement of gigantic sums of money, threatened their well being.
"Das Kapital" made them aware that "economic factors", which in lay language meant the accumulation of close-mouthed money, would determined the course of history. In turn, that meant their own reputation in the future history books.
The politicians knew that once and for all they have to stop the leakage which uncovered their ways of amassing their fortunes, and find fresh ways to secretly keep on making deals with each other.
One of the entries in the diary of William Ewart Gladstone, a British politician who attended the conference, says that "Three days into the conference, the answer was found coincidentally thanks to an obscure Austrian monk who went by the name of Gregor Mendel."
The revelations in the documents we've purchased are stunning.
First, Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, wasn't a part of the elite conference. He was a poor monk who was experimenting on the cross-breeding of peas. And because the gardens of Versailles were known at the time for their abundance of peas, he had decided to come down from Austria and secretly sneak into the Versailles' gardens.
He was caught, brought before the politicians and found guilty.
Before he was hanged, he threw onto the ground a load of peas which he pulled out of his sack and made a plea on their behalf. His last words were:
"The numerous variations of the pea, each with its own astonishing beauty of design must be fully appreciated. I'm totally convinced that no one will ever understand the coded language of the peas hidden in their design of colors, shapes, dots and lines with which they communicate with each other."
He was hanged with his own neck tax-tie which bore one stripe.
Minutes after the hanging, the politicians were struck as if by lightning. Suddenly, the real meaning of the monk's last words became crystal clear. And all of a sudden they knew the answer to their major