Entertaining Enterprise

Baseball and football have long had their halls of fame, and now capitalism is about to get a showcase that will surpass them both. Called Enterprise Square, USA, the 60,000-sq.-ft. megastructure on the campus of Oklahoma Christian College (enrollment: 1,700) will be a paean to the free-market system when it opens this week. Attractions range from a 12-ft-wide cash register and 2-ft.-tall puppets to a video-game room where visitors can try their hand at running dozens of different types of firms. There will even be a Hall of Giants in which colossal likenesses of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and other business heroes peer far above the heads of passersby.

Oklahoma Christian President J. Terry Johnson dreamed up Enterprise Square about six years ago in response to findings that many high school youths were bored by economics and knew little about it. The solution, he felt, would be a lively exhibition of the virtues of free enterprise. Says Johnson: "This will be America's most entertaining educational attraction. You will have to see it to believe it."

The $15 million project was built with contributions from more than 60 companies. Oklahoma-based Phillips Petroleum Co. chipped in $2 million and its former chairman, William Martin, directed the fund-raising campaign.

Although the exhibition is devoted to business, it does not neglect the public sector. A "Great Talking Face of Government" becomes so frenzied while calling for ever more regulation that the display blows out its circuits and stops. Explains a puppet to observers: "It's overworked."

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