Aaron Feurerstein is a factory owner who thinks of his workers as an asset, not an expense. He and his Malden Mills will go down in American history as one of the most courageous tales of corporate commitment our country has ever seen. When fire destroyed his factory in 1995, rather than collect an insurance settlement and rebuild somewhere where he could pay workers less, Feurerstein rebuilt the factory in Lawrence, MA and kept the town’s economy healthy and its people together. In return, his workers brought the company back into operation in record time. “There is a need to know that corporate America is interested in the welfare of the worker as well as the shareholder,” he says. Aaron started a kind of fire of his own, sparking a renewed collective faith in the American people. In Yiddish, there is a special word for a very decent human being: a mensch. When people ask him why he did what he did, Feuerstein’s answer is simple. “It was the right thing to do.”