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If you've just run across Newstalgia for the first time, please take some time to scroll down the page and check out the some 3,000+ posts, running the gamut from historic speeches (like this one) and historic events (like 3-Mile Island) to weekly Jazz, Rock and Classical concerts and everything in-between. It's all about history, all about information and all about our world.

I ran across an article about Eugene Debs the other day. Considered by many to be the first Socialist leader four-time candidate for President in the early 20th Century, firebrand labor leader and one of the more notable figures on the political scene from the 1890's until his death in 1926.

Here is an address, which has been attributed to an actor (Len Spencer) at the time, recorded shortly after he originally gave it in 1904.

Debs was renown for his public speaking, and his dramatic addresses were legendary. Although this is most likely not the real voice of Debs, Len Spencer was well aware of Debs' oratorical skills and was said to have captured the spirit of a Debs address quite accurately. Obviously, that isn't anything anyone can actually verify in 2012, so we'll have to take their word for it.

Here is the transcript of that address, as the original cylinder and recording techniques make it hard to understand at times:

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It's always interesting to look at situations and cultural/economic shifts in our society and think they are recent phenomena. The whole question of where Small Business stood in the wake of Big Business and the threat of monopolies was something on people's minds as far back as the 1950's, and further back when you take into consideration Anti-Trust Laws were introduced and enacted for a reason.

But in 1957, when this broadcast of the Sunday Talk Show New World aired, it was a concern among a lot of people and this was just around the time the Shopping Center (precursor to the Shopping Mall) was just starting to make its presence known in Mainstream America as the Suburban sprawl began and cities started to decentralize.

And of course, there was an economic consideration, as well as legislative one.

Henry Bison Jr. (Counsel – National Association of Retail Grocers): “I think the tax laws today are discriminatory against small business. I think furthermore they are leading to monopolistic tendencies which our anti-trust laws prohibit. I think, actually when you come down to think about it, the tax laws and our anti-trust laws are in major conflict with each other today.”

Could Mr. Bison and the others on the panel have imagined the wholesale deregulation and eradicating of Anti-Trust Legislation to take place beginning in the next decade? I really doubt it.

But then, the world was changing faster than most people were prepared for and there were a lot of distractions.

Here is the complete broadcast of New World as it originally aired on June 9, 1957.