Stories
Your stories - and stories
from the Fletcher archives
James Fletcher's conversation with Finance Minister Gordon Coates, before the 1935 election
Fletcher had been frustrated at the United-Reform government's response to his suggestions for public works' including State housing - to alleviate the Depression.
Coates was completely confident. "We have a sure winner in this," he told James Fletcher. "I'm going to tell the people that we've built up a reserve of £40,000,000 in London."
Fletcher said earnestly: "Don't tell them that Gordon. If you do, you'll be finished."
"Why?" replied Coates unbelievingly.
"Imagine a man who said to his wife: 'Business is very bad. You'll have to sack your maid and I'll get rid of the gardener.' She does what he says and for three years goes without everything she enjoys. No visits to the beauty parlour, no fancy food dishes. Then at the end of three years he comes to her and says: 'Go buy yourself a new frock. I'll let you into a secret - Do you know, thanks to our care, I've £3000 saved in the bank!' What would she say? She'd face up to him: 'Look at my hands! Look at my hair! Look at my clothes, and those old curtains, and the shabby house! And you tell me you've saved £3000!' She'd tell him to go to hell, and that's what the people will tell you!"
A letter to the editor - and the editors' response
Sirs,
In a magazine as streamlined in its make-up as Arrowhead, spare us your yen for antiquity. In your article on Duroid you dug up Noah and some embalmed Egyptian royalty. When Fletchers decided it would be fun to dig up Hobson Bay, your notion of writing it up was to dig up Maui and the old guff about his fishing the North Island out of the sea. There was some damned learned stuff about ancient Greeks in the Marble Company article. Greeks again, in your piece about prestressed concrete - Greeks plus the Romans, with La Scala Opera House (built seventeen-seventy-something) thrown in as a sop, I suppose, to modern-minded readers like Salvador Dali and myself.
Down in the past, dig, dig, dig all the time like Disney's seven dwarfs or a committee of hoary historians. Good idea to leave the deep research to Bob Stanbrook and his Banjo Shovel Boys at the Ohakuri tunnel job, eh? Watch it, or you'll find you've got one foot in the groove.
Signed: Yellow Badge
(We like modern-minded readers who call a spade a spade. - Eds.)
Christmas message from Jim (JC) Fletcher to staff 1955
"My grandfather (himself a builder) said you should never build a building which you had to run past. I wouldn't say that Fletchers have never done any jobs that we would not slow down to a gallop to pass, but I can say with conviction that they are very few and far between, and that on the other hand there are very very many jobs of which we are extremely proud. Our business has changed a great deal since my father launched it in Dunedin in 1909. Today we are a big business, but there is no virtue in big business unless it can yield results in terms of more efficient output, while at the same time retaining the human and personal touch which I believe has been a large part of our strength."