"The first objective of this society is to procure for youths
an economical and practical education, and to diffuse rational
and useful information through the community generally.
The second object is to apply the sciences and the various
branches of education to the domestic and useful arts, and to
all the common purposes of life.
Branches of this society may be formed in any place where a number
are disposed to associate for the same object, and to adopt the
following or similar articles as their constitution:
The society will hold meetings, as often as they think it expedient, for the purpose of mutual instruction in the sciences, by investigating and discussing them, or any other branch of useful knowledge. The several branches of Natural Philosophy, viz., Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Botany, and branch of the Mathematics, History, Political Economy, or any political, intellectual, or moral subject, may be examined and discussed by the society.
Any branch of the society may, as often as they think it expedient, procure regular courses of instruction, by lectures or otherwise, in any subject of useful knowledge.
The society, as they find it convenient, shall procure books, apparatus for illustrating the sciences, a cabinet of materials, and other articles of natural or artificial production.
The society may aid in establishing and patronizing an institution, or institutions, for giving to youths a thorough education-intellectual, moral and physical-and in the application of the sciences to agriculture and the other useful arts, and for qualifying teachers. The aid to be given by furnishing means for the pupils, by agricultural or mechanical operations, to defray or lessen the expenses of their education.
Any person may be a member of the society by paying to the treasurer, annually, one dollar. And ten dollars, paid at one time, will constitute a person a member for life.
The money paid to the society for membership or otherwise shall be appropriated to the purchase of books, apparatus, a cabinet, aiding an institution for practical education, or for some other object to the benefit of the society.
The officers of each branch of the society shall be a president, vice-president, treasurer, recording and corresponding secretaries; five curators, and three delegates to meet delegates from other branches of the society in the same county.
The president, vice-president, treasurer, and recording secretary shall perform the duties usually implied in those offices. The corresponding secretaries shall make communications to each other for the benefit of the society, as discoveries, improvements, or other circumstances shall require.
The curators shall have charge of the library, apparatus, cabinet, and all other property of the society not appertaining to the treasury.
The delegates of the several branches of the society in any county shall meet semi-annually, at such place as they shall choose, for the purpose of consulting upon measures for promoting the designs of the society, particularly for encouraging an institution for giving an economical and practical education, and for qualifying teachers.
The delegates from the several branches of the society in any county shall be called the board of delegates from the society for mutual education in that county.
The board of delegates in each county shall appoint such officers as shall be necessary for their organization, or for doing any business coming within their province.
Each board of delegates shall appoint a representative, to meet representatives from other boards, who shall be styled the board of mutual education for a given state; and it might be advantageous to have also a general board, embracing the United States.
It shall be the duty of the general or state boards to meet annually, to appoint a president and other officers, to devise and recommend such a system of education as they shall think most eligible, also to recommend such books as they shall think best fitted to answer the purposes for which they are designed, and to adopt and recommend such measures, generally, as are most likely to secure to the rising generation the best intellectual, moral and physical education, and to diffuse the greatest quantity of useful information among the various classes of the community.
Any branch of society will have the power to adopt such by-laws and regulations as will be necessary for the management and use of the library, apparatus, cabinet, &c., and for carrying into effect any designs not inconsistent with the general object of society.
Several institutions, essentially the same as here proposed, have already been formed in our country, and some of them are highly useful and respectable: that others may and will be formed, there is no doubt. The object of the above articles is to forward the formation of then upon a general plan, and to form a connecting link between them which will enable them to unite their efforts, and may possibly lead them to vie with each other in prosecuting their general object, which is certainly second to no one that ever enlisted the talents of the philosopher or of the statesman, or the feelings of the philanthropist (231-232).