E. H. Evenson was born at Whitewater, Wisconsin, in the year 1852. His early life was spent on a farm in Waupaca county, Wisconsin. At the age of 18 he began to teach in the common schools in his neighborhood, and with the money thus earned he started on a six years' course at Decorah College, Iowa, from which he graduated in the spring of '79. During all this time he taught common schools at intervals, and during vacations worked in the harvest fields of Minnesota and earned the money with which to pay his college expenses. Having finished his course at Decorah College he entered the State University of Wisconsin, from which he graduated with the class of '81.
In the fall of the same year, Mr. Evenson secured a position as teacher in Milton College, Milton, Wisconsin, where he remained for three years; at the end of that period he removed to Madison, South Dakota, to fill a place as teacher in the State Normal School at that city, which position he occupied for two years; he was then elected county superintendent of schools for Lake county, in which capacity he served two terms. At the close of the last term he made another move west, to Puget Sound, and settled on 40 acres of land near the town of Kent, where he now resides with his family. He is at present serving his second term as auditor of King county.
Mr. Evenson is a firm believer in the "single tax" theories of Henry George; that is, in placing all taxes on ground rents. The justice of that method, he claims, is based on the following self-evident truths:
"1st: That whatever the individual produces, belongs to the individual, and whatever the community produces, belongs to the community.
"2d: That the general rise in land value, commonly called ground rents, is caused by the growth of the community and its competition for work, and therefore, by right, belongs to the community.
"3d: That, as taxes are needed for the welfare of the community, it is only in accordance with natural and divine law that the community makes use of this common fund before it resorts to the confiscation of what properly belongs to the individual.
"4th: That it is not only unjust in principle, but injurious to the last degree in practice, that one man is taxed more for making land useful and employing labor on it, than another is taxed for holding land idle and keeping labor off it.
"5th: That to tax labor or its products, is to discourage industry.
"6th: That to tax land values to their full amount will compel every individual controlling natural opportunities to either utilize them by the employment of labor, or abandon them to others; that it will thus provide opportunities of work for all men, and secure to each the full reward of his labor."