Rhetorical Analysis Of Florence Kelly's Speech On Child Labor

In America, the twentieth century marked the beginning of a pivotal age that contained many social and political reforms for women. Feminists around the country each presented unique ideas for women’s rights, most of them through influential writings and speeches. Margaret Sanger was an undeniably significant contributor who made a huge impact on the future of women’s civil liberties. A nurse with a prolific writing career, Sanger delivered her speech “The Children’s Era” in 1925, a text that advocates for the use of contraceptives to improve the lives of mothers and children. Throughout the speech, she employs the use of analogies to provide clarity to her purpose and deliver a lasting message that women’s bodies must be controlled if they are to effectively fulfill their maternal obligations. Sanger also incorporates two of the Aristotelian appeals, logos and pathos, to accentuate the plight that mothers and children must face despite an accessible solution. The careful application of diction throughout her speech also emphasizes her three main rhetorical strategies. These rhetorical devices support Sanger’s overall message of maternal empowerment and convince her hesitant audience to fully accept her progressive ideals.

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

In America, there used to be unfair laws and regulations regarding labor. Children are put to work in harsh conditions, conditions often deemed difficult even for adults, and are forced to work ridiculous hours. Florence Kelley gave a speech at the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905. In her speech, Kelley uses repetition, pathos, imagery, logos, and carefully placed diction to express how child labor is morally wrong and inhumane.

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

In Florence Kelley’s speech delivered to the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1905, the author employs empathetic repetition, strong facts, and piteous diction to inspire as many people as possible to work against child labor.

Guilt and lack of empowerment can cause people to stand up for what they believe in. Florence Kelley, a successful social worker delivered a speech in 1905 for the National American Woman Suffrage Association at Philadelphia. Passionately and pointedly, Kelley persuades her audience that if women were allowed to vote, then child labor laws could be fixed.

In her address, she used pathos to grab the attention of the audience, by talking about happiness being achieved only by doing things that benefited others and that enslaving another is no different from dehumanizing them. The structure of her address shows the passion she had for the freedom of her people as well as the urge to unite women to join her cause. In her essay, she wants to inspire women to connect their maternal instincts to the abolitionist movement and give sympathy to the slaves as if they were their own flesh and blood.

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.

“I believe in the children of the future,” are lyrics of The Greatest Love of All, made famous in 1977 and 1985 by George Benson and Whitney Houston respectively. They believed in the value of children in our society and that they should be protected. However, those people believed in a child 's capacity to change the world in the future. While people in the past saw children as a way to change the world while they were children. In the late seventeenth century, industrialization arose in England ushering in a new era of industry in our world. More industry means more workers, including children. With the rise of industrialization in a nation, child laborers are viciously abused due to their niche roles in production and their families

Florence Kelley, an active social worker and reformer of the 20th century, rants over the horrendous working conditions kids must endure. She presents this in her speech before National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, which provides context and credibility for her argument. Kelley argues clearly of the terrible conditions and work hours kids suffer to bring about her message of, “enlisting the workingmen voters.” This is essentially to free the kids from the disastrous issue through her usage of credibility, empathetic tone to strike the audience, and her usage of examples of their conditions and state rules to support her message and purpose.

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.”

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.

Improving undesirable working conditions for women and eliminating child labor was an impassioned issue for female reformers during the time of industrialization in the United States. Florence Kelley, a united states social worker and reformer, opposes the appalling work environment children as young as six would toil through and relays her speech to the National Woman Suffrage Association to propel her audience to demand changes that are necessary to stop countless hours of hard-work the youth struggle to complete. Kelley adopts a fervid tone in order to convince the audience that political action is needed to adjust the laws that allows child labor to continue in many states with her use of pathos and rhetorical questions meant to stir action