torial labor furnishes the occasion for leading
men of State and Nation to pay homage to American journalism, now the
great forum of our free institutions.

The duties and responsibilities of journalism are largely defined by
their environment, and there may be fitness in this occasion to refer to
the political, business, social and moral conditions under which the
Juniata "Sentinel" was founded fifty years ago, in contrast with the
greatly changed conditions which confront the journals of to-day. The
people of Juniata county were a well-to-do class, adapted to the
primitive conditions in which they lived. The enervating blight of
luxury and the despair of pinching want were strangers in their midst.
They believed in the church, in the school, in the sanctity of home, in
integrity between man and man. Christianity was accepted by them as the
common law, sincerely by many and with a respect akin to reverence by
all; and that beautiful humanity that springs from the mingled
dependence and affection of rural neighborly ties, ever taught that the
bruised reed should not be broken. They had no political convulsions
such as are common in these days. Even a sweeping political revolution
would not vary the party majority over a hundred in the few thousands of
votes they cast, and excepting in the white heat of national contests,
their personal affections often outweighed their duties to party. Public
vices and public wrongs in local administration were rarely known, and
there was little to invite the aggressive features which are so
conspicuous in modern journalism. Ministers mingled freely with the
every-day life of their flocks and were exemplars of simplicity,
frugality and integrity, and the lawyer who hoped to be successful
required first of all to command the confidence of the community in his
honesty. The ballot and the jury-box were regarded as sacred as the
sacrament itself, and the criminal courts had usually little to do
beyond the cases of vagrant offenders. Business was conducted as a rule
without the formality of contracts, and those whose lives justly
provoked scandal were shunned on every side. This community possessed
the only real wealth the world can give--content; and the local
newspaper of that day, even under the direction of a progressive
journalist, could be little more than a commonplace chronicler of
current events.

The most satisfactory newspaper work I have ever done, I mean the most
satisfactory