Florence Kelley's Speech On Child Labor Rights

Florence Kelley delivered a speech to the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1905. Her speech is a plead for improving the existing child labor laws and working conditions. Throughout her speech, Florence Kelley utilizes many rhetorical strategies to convey her message about child labor laws, these strategies include: appeal to logos, parallel structure, and anecdote.

Throughout history, individuals have fought for more justifiable working conditions. Florence Kelley, a social worker and reformer, fought to gain more adequate working conditions for the children of the United States. At this time nearly twenty percent of American workers were under the age of sixteen. Kelley delivered a speech in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, during the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, that strived for more fair-minded hours, rather than the long, unhealthy, and tedious shifts thats children were put through overnight. Kelley utilizes both appeals to logic and appeals to emotion, in order to rally up her audience in joining her to fight for more rational, more healthy, and more just hours.

Throughout the beginning of her speech, Kelley makes use of disturbing anecdotes that appeal to women's emotions. She first illustrates that while they “sleep, several thousand little girls” are “working in textile mills” throughout the night. This use of little girls working highlights that children all around the United States are not sleeping but are operating machines: making clothes for the adults to purchase. She incorporates this factor in order to encourage the concerned mothers to help alter labor laws so that their children are not working twelve-hour shifts. Kelley continues to describe how little girls of “six or seven years,” who are “just tall enough to reach” the machines, will be working eleven hours a day. Kelley’s use of the children's height emphasizes how as soon as children reach a certain height, they are being deprived of their childhood and sent to work in the factories. She continues to repeat the phrase that “while [they] sleep” little girls and boys “will be working” in the mills. Kelley’s continual use of this phrase evokes sympathy in the women so they can help change the lives of children by amending the harsh child labor laws.

But, before she brings this up, she first convinces her audience just how excruciatingly terrible child labor is. Kelley focuses on children working long hours through the night, saying, “tonight while we sleep…working all night long.” She then goes on to repeat the phrases, “while we sleep,” and, “all night long,” various times throughout the core of her speech. The emphasis on children working through the night appeals to the audience’s pathos; it includes the listeners in the force enslaving children, making them accountable. While the audience sleeps in the comfort of their homes, young girls spend all night working to make products for them to enjoy. The sorrowful repetition gains the listener’s sympathy for the speaker’s cause. Lastly, Florence Kelley demonstrates ironic diction in her attempt to persuade her spectators to ally with her campaign. The speaker says, “boys and girls…enjoy the pitiful privilege,” to describe young children going off to their jobs instead of to their playdates. The use of the contradictory phrase “pitiful privilege,” reminds the audience that the privilege of having a job, earning a living, becomes a burden when forced on these young

She places a feeling of guilt on her audience, but calls them to action. She said, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night … spinning and weaving cotton and wool silks and ribbons for us to buy” (ln 18-22). She faults herself and her audience for sitting idly by while children are working in the middle of the night in harsh conditions. Furthermore, she continues to guilt the audience by stating that all the work these children are doing are for products that the audience will buy. In lines 59-61, Kelley attacks a bill that was removed that protected fourteen year old girls from working all night. This condemns her opposition as shameful. Kelley tries to unite her female audience against the “great evil” (ln 64-65) that is child labor. She believes that the suffrage of women will free children from the cruel nature of their working conditions.

In 1905, in the United States, some children as young as six years old are working in factories and women aren’t allowed to vote. Florence Kelley is a fiery and inspiring child labor activist and also a suffragette. On July 22, 1905, in Philadelphia, she gives a speech to the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to try to rally them to assist her in her main cause which is fixing the child labor system. In her speech where she doesn’t hold back, Kelley lets the audience know why the child labor system is atrocious and why they should get involved. She also tells them the steps that they should take to try to right these wrongs, in convincing their husbands to vote for child labor

Kelley accentuates white girls in hopes that her audience will imagine their own daughters in a similar situation and feel they are to blame. Throughout the first half of her speech, Kelley uses rhetorical devices to elicit the feelings of sympathy, remorse, and pity to persuade her audience. Using extensive details, she illustrates the harsh reality of what the children go through. She expresses that tonight while they sleep “several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons” for the audience to buy. She intentionally mentions items of necessity and luxury to relate to the poor and wealthier people she is speaking to. She uses rhetorical stances to emphasize her point by listing all the items the children make throughout the night that her audience members have most likely previously purchased. Going into detail that “the children make [their] shoes in the shoe factories; they knit [their] stockings, [their] knitted underwear” and continues by adding that they are “little beast of burden, robbed of the school life” so they can work instead. With these rhetorical stances, she evokes the feeling of guilt within her audience. By painting this picture, she reveals the grim truth that these children are forced to live by due to the

“Tonight while we sleep…” those little children will be busy working adult like hours, does not that upset you? Due to child labor laws in the United States in the early 20th century, children were working a great quantity of hours during the night time “while we sleep.” In the United States approximately twenty million children are working for their own food because of child labor laws. Florence Kelley, the author of this essay is disgusted by these unjust child labor laws and is empathetic towards the children,but also Kelley is ashamed of the United States rights of women. In this speech, Kelley expresses her loathe feeling towards child labor laws and emphasizes the fact that women cannot vote; in order for them to vote against them.

Florence Kelley is a social worker and reformer who fights for child labor laws and better working conditions for women. At the National Assembly Women Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, Kelley recites a speech about the issue of child labor laws. She uses rhetorical strategies such as repetition of the many negative aspects of child labor through specific examples, criticism of state policies, and emotional appeal. A combination of figures, logic, evidence, and emotional appeal will help convince her audience that child labor is a problem.

Kelley addresses this idea by stating, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through… silks and ribbons for us to buy.” Essentially, the usage of this rhetorical strategy makes the audience more reluctant to listen and agree by appealing to the kids’ situations by adding, “…while we sleep through the night.” Additionally, Kelley introduces additional pathos by stating, “New Jersey, boys and girls, enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.” This oxymoron of a child actually enjoying constant labor “all night long” brings her audience in to feel guilty. Ultimately, her utilization of examples of children working through the night to produce what the audience wears and use in their daily lives draws the audience into her message and helps gain

cause she believed in, Kelley moved up in society by serving as the head of the National

3. Urban industrialism dislocated women’s lives no less than men’s. Like men, women sought political change and organized to promote issues central to their lives, campaigning for temperance and woman suffrage., Susan B. Anthony, launched the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, demanding the vote for women suffrage, though not yet generally supported, was no longer considered a crackpot idea. Thanks to the WCTU’s support of the “home protection” ballot, suffrage had become accepted as a means to an end even when it was not embraced as a woman’s natural right.

Since capitalism has existed, children have been able to work. These children have worked in the harshest conditions and the longest hours. With thousands of children working in the United States, social worker Florence Kelley decided something needed to be done about it. So on July 22, 1905, she delivered a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), analyzing, and explaining the problems with children in the workplace. She uses the rhetorical strategy, cause and effect, to exemplify the pros and cons of child labor at the time. Kelley later explains how her thoughts can reflect on the future of child labor in the United States.

Florence Kelley was a United States social worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women. Throughout her speech to the Philadelphia Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she stresses the importance of changing the working conditions that are in place for children. By using child labor as her baseline, Kelley is able to talk about her main point, which is her suggestion for women’s rights with the help of repetition, strong word choice, and opposition.

There are many ways that Florence Kelley uses rhetorical devices to convey her message about child labor to her audience. One way that she does this is through appealing to the audience’s emotion. Kelly states that”... while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills those states, working eleven hours at night”(Kelly). This appeals to emotion because the thought of a little girl working in a dangerous mill, while others are sleep is sad and depressing. Another reason that this is part of the text appeals to emotion during this time frame she gave the speech is because the thought of a little “white girl” working in the Mills was more important and more appealing than a little black girl