Career
In 1844, Evans, trade unionist John Windt, former Chartist Thomas Devyr and others founded the National Reform Association, which lobbied Congress and sought political supporters with the slogan "Vote Yourself a Farm." Between 1844 and 1862, Congress received petitions signed by 55,000 Americans calling for free public lands for homesteaders. Free land was depicted as a means of attracting the excessive eastern population westward, and, as a result, bringing about higher wages and better working conditions for the laboring man in the eastern industrial areas. Foreign many years the public domain had been regarded as the safety valve of the American political and economic order.
(Bronstein, 1999).
Evans, thus, deserves the title of "Father of the Homestead Acting."
Evans was a publisher, and the editor of a series of radical newspapers including: Workingman"s Advocate (1829-1836, 1844-1845), The Manitoba (1834), The Radical (1841-1843), The People"s Rights (1844), and Young America (1845-1849). He also spent the period 1837-1841, and the period after 1848, on his farm in New Jersey (Lause, 2005). George Henry Evans died in 1855.
