Rhetorical Techniques Used In Florence Kelley's Speech

During the time Florence Kelley was advocating for changes, child labor was a popular unrestricted practice. The kids were working making textiles and other items in horrible working conditions. Many states had children working more than 12 hours a day and night shifts while they were not allowed to go to school. Florence Kelley was a United States social worker and a reformer. She fought ferociously for improvements in child labor and conditions for working women. At this convention for the National American Woman Suffrage Association she wants to reach out the women focused on suffrage towards other issues. Kelley used rhetorical strategies to help convince her audience to help her fight against child labor. The use of repetition, imagery, and rhetorical question help get her point of eradicating child labor across to the audience.

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.

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 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

When it comes to things like gender equality, and feminism people are going to have their own feelings and opinions about these certain subjects. It could bring strong, sympathetic, angry, or uninterested. Either way, it brings you some type of emotion to create pathos. She also uses words like “we” and “us” to involve herself with the audience to make feel what she’s feeling. One thing she states that “If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks” (1).

Rhetorical Analysis Response Florence Kelley, an avid activist and reformer, successfully promoted child labor laws and improved working conditions for women. In Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, Kelley delivered a speech regarding her position on child labor before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She informs the audience of her beliefs; using rhetorical strategies to support them. Florence Kelley effectively conveys her message to the National American Women Suffrage Association by implementing repetition and comparison and contrast in her speech.

Kelley utilizes factual information to assert her authority on the subject. She opens the speech with, “We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen who are earning their bread.” (Lines

Change has become an incremental aspect when it comes to reaching a success in our society. This can be seen in several different aspects within our society. It is seen within our economy, traditional and nontraditional values, and especially within our government. However, in order for us to reach any form of higher success we must be willing to change. In Florence Kelley's Speech, she expresses her firm and unchanging view of the violation of children's rights in child labor in order to make a change through the use of modes of discourse intertwined with sophisticated uses of diction, imagery, and other uses of appeals to tie into her audience and further encompass her purpose.

In the speech, Kelley introduces the issue in a credible manner, which allows the audience to support her argument. For example, the introductory of the various state policies lets the audience acknowledge her credibility by introducing these topics. This emphasizes ethos in her message of child labor prevention such as,” They vary from age six to seven years…in Georgia…eight, nine,ten…coal breakers of

To this day the women’s suffrage movement ignites women in the present to keep those right burning. Alice Paul and her fellow women suffrages demonstrated through speeches, lobbying and petitioning Congressional Committees, with parades, picketing and demonstrations, and with arrest that lead to imprisonment. These women express courage that women still uphold for years after their legacy has passed on, such as the article “Women’s Strike for Equality,” by Linda Napikoski, in the demonstration that was held on August 26, 1970 on the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage. As well as an article “Women to Protest For Equality Today,” by United Press that talks about on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the women’s suffrage and “declared war on firms that Damage the Image,” of the fair sex. Alice Paul, set the stage for inspiring women to fight for their rights everywhere across the world.

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.

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.

One of the many social issues in the early twentieth century involved child labor. Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer, fought successfully for child labor laws as well as improving conditions for working women. Her 1905 speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association possessed a powerful message towards freeing the children who suffer hours of work producing products for the people to use. She captured her audience by helping them realize the difficulties children faced day and night and presented the solution to the problem. Kelley precisely weaved her rhetorical strategies together with ethos, pathos, and logos to deliver an inspiring speech and furthermore submit a solution that would help children in the present and future.

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