A Suitable Man

In 1924, into the tiny town of Warrnambool, which then had a population of a fraction under 4000 people, there came a travelling salesman... The remarkable life and achievements of Fletcher Jones.

Australians of a certain generation all know Fletcher Jones - the stores, the clothing, the daggy dad slacks - but not many people know the extraordinary story of the man who founded the store. David Fletcher Jones was many things: altruistic, visionary, pragmatic, selfish, community-minded, a canny businessman, an entrepreneur, a romantic, a dreamer.

His rise was unlikely, given he was the stammering, motherless son of an impoverished Bendigo blacksmith, who left school at twelve to work for the family and ended his war service buried alive by a shell explosion at Fromelles. On his return to Australia, Fletcher had an epiphany in the unlikeliest of places: the veterans' dole queue. In his memoirs, he wrote, 'I joined the pension queue for the third time at the Clifton Hill Post Office... suddenly when almost at the pay counter I broke free of the queue and went for my life down Queen's Parade.' Instead, he travelled the Western District selling clothes, then opened a tailor's shop in Warrnambool. Business boomed. Later, he bought a five-acre quarry and rubbish dump outside Warrnambool as the site for his giant factory. Seeing wonders in the dust, he named the place Pleasant Hill and put a sign over the front: 'Fletcher Jones and Staff'.

Because not only was Fletcher Jones revolutionising menswear with his iconic high-quality, ready-to-wear trousers, but - remarkably for the times - the manufacturing and retail empire he founded was based on profit-sharing and staff ownership. By 1945, the Fletcher Jones factory was co-owned by its employees, with nearly 3000 workers at its peak. Fletcher also recruited migrant staff, notably Italians, by turning up personally at the docks, and made a point of hiring Gunditjmara people, war veterans and the disabled. His life is both fascinating and emblematic of Australia's twentieth-century progress - in social policy, changing world views, manufacturing, the city and country divide, the rise and fall of wool. But most important, perhaps, was his fundamental human decency.

He was a survivor of war - including the worst single night of carnage ever experienced by Australian soldiers - of poverty, illiteracy, destitution and bankruptcy. Who, despite all that, never lost his humour or his optimism or his deep regard for the people around him. The life of Fletcher Jones raises deep questions about why good people are good. And perhaps the most profound question of all - is it still possible in this venal age to run an enterprise for profit while seeking to do good at individual and societal levels? There are lessons for us all in a life like Fletcher's.

He was also much-loved. And when he died in 1977, Warrnambool lined the streets to see his cortege pass by.