Poland's rise as a bastion of free enterprise

In 1975, as America was preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, Poland was a suppressed Soviet satellite state.

The Polish people were impoverished, had no right to free speech and if you wanted a job, you had to play ball with Communist Party bosses. Poland was a bleak land that had never recovered from World War II.

That same year, more than 5,000 miles away, the Business Week program began at Central Washington University as a way for high school students to experience our nation’s free enterprise system. It was an idea germinated at the Association of Washington Business by former Yelm gr...