Of all the things that Jerry Leslie has written, this is the one that is
worth repeating:

> CEOs like Aaron Feuerstein are almost unheard of in this world
> of "greed id good"...
>
>     A CEO Who Lives by What's Right (washingtonpost.com)
>
>    "In this anxious hour of pink-slip dread, it is restoring to think of
>     Aaron Feuerstein, a Massachusetts manufacturer who prizes his
>     employees and risks profits on their behalf.
>
>     The CEO of Malden Mills, located in Lawrence, the 23rd poorest
>     community in the country, stepped clear of the greedy stereotype of
>     his kind in 1995 when, just before Christmas, his factory burned down.
>     Rather than taking the insurance money and retiring or moving the
>     plant to some Third World country, he promptly announced that he would
>     rebuild. He gave bonuses to the help and paid them while they waited
>     for the factory reopening.
>
>     Last Monday, this paragon of corporate virtue held a rally at the
>     plant he inherited from his father. The idea was to kick off a
>     campaign for Malden Mills's special product, Polartec, a light, warm
>     fabric that is keeping U.S. Marines cozy in the grinding cold of
>     Afghanistan. Sen. John Kerry hailed Malden Mills as a mill with soul
>     and a mill with heart. Rep. Marty Meehan, the local congressman,
>     saluted Feuerstein for sticking it out with his workers, and sticking
>     it out in Lawrence.
>
>     Feuerstein has not had all the good fortune he may deserve. Sales
>     dipped, and he recently filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and
>     negotiated a $25 million bank loan. Feuerstein would have liked the
>     money without the chapter -- "I hate to put any stain on our beautiful
>     name" -- but he told cheering workers that together they would win.
>
>     Columnist Mark Shields was the first to make the striking contrast
>     between Feuerstein and today's most celebrated bankruptcy case, that
>     of Enron, the monstrous Texas energy outfit. Most of its 21,000 lost
>     jobs. For 11,000, it was a lump of coal, the loss of life savings
>     invested in Enron stock. Enron employees were urged to buy the stock
>     with their retirement funds, their 401(k)s. When Enron started going
>     south in October, however, the employees were forbidden to sell. Enron
>     CEO Kenneth Lay and his fellow executives were exempt from the
>     lockdown and sold, often at tremendous profits.
>
>     On Tuesday, stricken ex-Enron workers told the Senate Commerce
>     Committee of being seduced, betrayed and abandoned by their bosses.
>     Enron lied about earnings, cooked its books and left its employees in
>     the lurch, while its top brass made out like bandits.
>
>     Janice Farmer, a Florida widow, had her daughter with her to help her
>     through her testimony. A year ago, she retired with $700,000 in Enron
>     stock. Today, it is worth $4,000. When she saw that Enron was ailing,
>     she tried to sell. She was locked out.
>
>     If Lay is sorry about all this, he hasn't said so. Acting committee
>     chairman Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said Lay had been invited to testify
>     but declined and promised to come later. Lay is a good friend to the
>     president and is his biggest contributor. White House strategist Karl
>     Rove owned a big bloc of Enron stock, and when Vice President Cheney
>     was devising his strange energy plan, Lay was consulted. There are
>     other Texas ties: Wendy Gramm, wife of Sen. Phil Gramm, is a member of
>     the Enron board and chairman of the auditing committee.

[Secretary of the Army Thomas White was also associated with Enron. He was
chairman of Enron's broadband trading unit, a unit that has recently come in
for severe criticism due to its use of phony trades and cooked-book
accounting schemes.]


>     Where Feuerstein and Lay differed most sharply was on devotion to the
>     bottom line. To Lay, we are almost forced to conclude, it was
>     paramount; Feuerstein put the excellence of his product above the
>     entries in his ledgers. To Lay, employees were as disposable as
>     Kleenex; Feuerstein thinks they are partners.
>
>     Where did Feuerstein get his extraordinary ideas about
>     worker-management relations? "At my father's table. We all had to be
>     there. No pizza in the kitchen. I was seven years old when I heard my
>     father tell a story I never forgot."
>
>     Aaron's father had watched his father, who founded the factory, go
>     around at the end of the day and give money to every one of his
>     workers. Aaron's father explained to his father, a Hungarian
>     immigrant, that this was not the American way. Aaron's grandfather
>     screamed at Aaron's father that it was against the Torah to do it any
>     other way.
>
>     Young Aaron consulted his rabbi, who happened to be his maternal
>     grandfather. His other grandfather, he was told, was right. In
>     Leviticus, it is written, "You are not permitted to oppress the
>     working man because he is poor and needy." Aaron memorized the passage
>     in Hebrew -- and lives by it.
>
>     Such a rabbi Kenneth Lay should have had."

Malden Mills also used to run HP3000s in their heyday. To my knowledge, Enron
never used HP3000s. If you're going to judge a company, you might as well use
that criterion as well.

Wirt Atmar

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