The young fellows were anxious to improve themselves.  Now, mark the difference between these working lads and the boys from the public schools.  Had such a question been put to the latter their answer would have been a contemptuous stare, or a contemptuous laugh.  Improve themselves?  They were already improved.  They were so far improved that nine-tenths of them were contented with the moderate amount of knowledge necessary for the practice of their professions.  If one became a solicitor, a doctor, a schoolmaster, a barrister, a clergyman, it was sufficient for him, in most cases, just to pass the examinations.  Then, no further improvement for the rest of their natural life.  But these others, who had everything to gain, whose ambitions were just awakening, who were just beginning to understand that there was every inducement to improve themselves, joined the classes, and began to work with as much zeal as they showed in their play.

What they learned concerns us little.  It may be recorded, however, that they learned everything.  Practical trades were taught; technical classes were held; there was a School of Science in which such subjects as chemistry, physics, mathematics, mechanics, building, were taught.  There was a School of Art, in which wood modelling, carving, and other minor arts were taught, as well as painting and drawing.  There was a Commercial School for Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Shorthand, Typewriting; French, German, etc., were taught; there were Musical Classes, Elocution Classes, a School of Engineering, a School of Photography.  Enough; it will be seen that everything a lad might desire to learn he could learn and did learn.

But the Polytechnic was only one of many such institutions.  In London alone there existed, in the year 1893, between two and three hundred, large and small; there were nearly fifty branches of the University Extension Scheme; the Continuation classes were held in many Board Schools, while of special clubs, mostly for athletic purposes, the number was legion.  As for the numbers enrolled in these associations, already in 1893, when those things were all young, one finds 13,000 members of the Regent Street Poly, 4,000 at the People’s Palace; the same number at the Birkbeck; the same at the Goldsmiths’ Institute; at the City of London College, 2,500; and so on.  Of the Athletic Clubs the Cyclists’ Union alone contained no fewer than 20,000 members.

Figures may mean anything.  It is, however, significant that in a population of five millions which gives perhaps 700,000 young men between fifteen and twenty, of whom about 100,000 were below the rank of craftsmen and 100,000 above, there should have been found a few years after the introduction of the system about 70,000 youths wise enough and resolute enough to join these classes.