“Then there was a third class of mankind, starving, with their tables breaking with luscious foods, cold in warehouses of ready-made clothing of the most costly fabrics; seeing not in the moon-light, and restless to distraction on beds of eiderdown.  They do not know the use or value of things.  They are harassed with plenty they cannot appropriate.  They are doubly poor.  They need education.  The library is a care, an expense and a disgrace to the owner who cannot read.  To give education to those in the possession of property which they might use for the help of humanity and which they might enjoy, is as clear a duty and charity as it is to help the beggar.  And, indeed, indirectly the education of the unwise wealthy to become useful may be the most practical way of raising the poor.  There is a need for every dollar of the nation’s property, and it should be invested by men whose minds and hearts have been trained to see the human need and to love to satisfy it.

“The thought that in education of the best quality was to be found the remedy for hunger, loneliness, crime and weakness was most clearly emphasized to my mind by the coming of two young men who had felt the need from the under side.  They had received but little instruction; they were over twenty years of age, and they wished to enter the ministry.  Was there any way open for a poor, industrious laborer to get the highest education while he supported his mother, sister and himself?  I urged them to try it for the good of many who would follow them if they made it a clear success.  I was elated almost to uncontrollable enthusiasm the night they came to my study to begin their course.  They brought five with them, and all proved themselves noble men.  One is not, for God took him.  But the others are moulding and inspiring their world.”

Thus was conceived the idea of the institution that is now educating annually three thousand men and women.  The need for it has been plainly proven.  Rev. Forest Dager, at one time Dean of Temple College, said in regard to the people who in later life crave opportunities for study: 

“That the Temple College idea of educating working men and working women, at an expense just sufficient to give them an appreciation of the work of the Institution, covers a wide and long-neglected field of educational effort, is at once apparent to a thoughtful mind.  Remembering that out of a total enrollment in the schools of our land of all grades, public and private, of 14,512,778 pupils, 96-1/2 per cent are reported as receiving elementary instruction only; that not more than 35 in 1,000 attend school after they are fourteen years of age; that 25 of these drop out during the next four years of their life; that less than 10 in 1,000 pass on to enjoy the superior instruction of a college or some equivalent grade of work, we begin to see the unlimited field before an Institution like this.  Thousands upon thousands of those who have