h natural resources which have already passed
under private ownership. Evans proposed instead that Congress give each
would-be settler land for a homestead free of charge.

As late as 1852 debaters in Congress pointed out that in the preceding
sixty years only 100,000,000 acres of the public lands had been sold and
that 1,400,000,000 acres still remained at the disposal of the
government. Estimates of the required time to dispose of this residuum
at the same rate of sale varied from 400 or 500 to 900 years. With the
exaggerated views prevalent, it is no wonder that Evans believed that
the right of the individual to as much land as his right to live calls
for would remain a living right for as long a period in the future as a
practical statesman may be required to take into account.

The consequences of free homesteads were not hard to picture. The
landless wage earners could be furnished transportation and an outfit,
for the money spent for poor relief would be more profitably expended in
sending the poor to the land. Private societies and trade unions, when
laborers were too numerous, could aid in transporting the surplus to the
waiting homesteads and towns that would grow up. With the immobility of
labor thus offering no serious obstacle to the execution of the plan,
the wage earners of the East would have the option of continuing to work
for wages or of taking up their share of the vacant lands. Moreover,
mechanics could set up as independent producers in the new settlements.
Enough at least would go West to force employers to offer better wages
and shorter hours. Those unable to meet the expenses of moving would
profit by higher wages at home. An equal opportunity to go on land would
benefit both pioneer and stay-at-home.

But Evans would go still further in assuring equality of opportunity. He
would make the individual's right to the resources of nature safe
against the creditors through a law exempting homesteads from attachment
for debts and even against himself by making the homestead inalienable.
Moreover to assure that right to the American people _in perpetuo_ he
would prohibit future disposal of the public land in large blocks to
moneyed purchasers as practiced by the government heretofore. Thus the
program of the new agrarianism: free homesteads, homestead exemption,
and land limitation.

Evans had a plan of political action, which was as unique as his
economic program. His previous political experiences