George Henry Evans is noted chiefly as the editor and publisher of the Working Man's Advocate, the second labor paper established in the United States. For a period in the 1830s, it was the most widely copied and quoted workingman's paper in the country. But Evans's most remarkable single achievement--one which he did not live to see realized--was the passage in 1862 of the Homestead Act, permitting free grants of public land to those who actually settled on the land. The founder, leading spirit, chief ideologue, and propagandist of the National Reform Association, he argued from a deeply held belief that a portion of land was the birthright of every man. His ideas are said to have influenced Henry George, the later social and political philosopher, and are still embedded in American thinking on land reform.

Evans was born on 25 March 1805 near Bromyard, Herefordshire, England, to George and Sarah...