Indiana, and Toledo, Ohio. In 1892, Stevens became a resident of Hull House where she joined other social reformers such as Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, and Sophonisba Breckinridge at the settlement. Stevens became one of the few women involved at Hull House who had first-hand experience of working-class life. She represented the labor organizations of northwestern Ohio in the National Industrial Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in February, 1892, and in the Omaha, Nebraska convention of the People's Party, July, 1892. For several years, Stevens held a position on the editorial staff of the Toledo Bee. By 1893, she was half owner and editor of the Vanguard, an organ of the People's Party, published in Chicago in the interests of economic and industrial reforms through political action. She was appointed to the Women's Auxiliary Committee of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition Labor Congress. In that year, she became Florence Kelley's assistant as the state's factory inspector and together the two women helped John Peter Altgeld to pass and enforce legislation that controlled child labour in Illinois. This included a law limiting women and children to a maximum eight-hour day. This success was short-lived and in 1895, the Illinois Manufacturers' Association had the law repealed. In 1896, Stevens became the first probation officer of the then-recently established Cook County Juvenile Court committee. Stevens wrote on child labor in Child Slavery in America a chapter entitled "The child, the factory, and the state" (The Arena, vol. 10, June 1894), while an assistant factory inspector for Illinois. It was written from the standpoint that systematic wage labor on the part of children is an unmitigated evil as it is in childhood that all the habits are formed which are to determine what a man or woman will be disposed to do, or will be able to do, when grown. A child reared into an adult without participating in productive work is more often spoiled than benefited by the exemption. The discussion was more of a judicious and instructive study than hyper-fervid diatribes. The real question she probed was how early in life does productive labor become essential to the best growth of body, mind and ability. Further reading Davis, Allen F. "Stevens, Alzina Parsons" Notable American Women. Vol. 3, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975 References Attribution Bibliography External links 1849 births 1900 deaths 19th-century American journalists 19th-century