But his story was very far indeed from being "all there was to it," for he had quite omitted to state the extraordinary fact that, beginning with those seven pupils, coming to his library on an evening in 1884, the Temple University has numbered, up to Commencement-time in 1915, 88,821 students! Nearly one hundred thousand students, and in the lifetime of the founder! Really, the magnitude of such a work cannot be exaggerated, nor the vast importance of it when it is considered that most of these eighty-eight thousand students would not have received their education had it not been for Temple University. And it all came from the instant response of Russell Conwell to the immediate need presented by a young man without money!
"And there is something else I want to say," said Dr. Conwell, unexpectedly. "I want to say, more fully than a mere casual word, how nobly the work was taken up by volunteer helpers; professors from the University of Pennsylvania and teachers from the public schools and other local institutions gave freely of what time they could until the new venture was firmly on its way. I honor those who came so devotedly to help. And it should be remembered that in those early days the need was even greater than it would now appear, for there were then no night schools or manual-training schools. Since then the city of Philadelphia has gone into such work, and as fast as it has taken up certain branches the Temple University has put its energy into the branches just higher. And there seems no lessening of the need of it," he added, ponderingly.
No; there is certainly no lessening of the need of it! The figures of the annual catalogue would alone show that.
As early as 1887, just three years after the beginning, the Temple College, as it was by that time called, issued its first catalogue, which set forth with stirring words that the intent of its founding was to:
"Provide such instruction as shall be best adapted to the higher education of those who are compelled to labor at their trade while engaged in study.
"Cultivate a taste for the higher and most useful branches of learning.
"Awaken in the character of young laboring men and women a determined ambition to be useful to their fellow-men."
The college—the university as it in time came to be—early broadened its scope, but it has from the first continued to aim at the needs of those unable to secure education without such help as, through its methods, it affords.
It was chartered in 1888, at which time its numbers had reached almost six hundred, and it has ever since had a constant flood of applicants. "It has demonstrated," as Dr. Conwell puts it, "that those who work for a living have time for study." And he, though he does not himself add this, has given the opportunity.
He feels especial pride in the features by which lectures and recitations are held at practically any hour which best suits the convenience of the students. If any ten students join in a request for any hour from nine in the morning to ten at night a class is arranged for them, to meet that request! This involves the necessity for a much larger number of professors and teachers than would otherwise be necessary, but that is deemed a slight consideration in comparison with the immense good done by meeting the needs of workers.