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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Florence Kelley's Speech

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Florence Kelley Speech Florence Kelley conveys her message about child labor in her speech. Through the use of different rhetorical strategies, she shows us how each state’s child labor laws are different. Each state has their own law of how long the child should work and an age. The children are expected to be working while the adults are buying. The children will always be working there because without an education, they can’t really do anything else. Kelley uses her tone to show us how shameful some states should be when it comes to their child labor laws. Her sympathy can be heard through the speech when she talks about little girls staying up day and night to weave and sew the products. When she talks about New Jersey’s laws, she was disappointed because New Jersey lets the children work all night long with only a small amount of money. All the other states were harsh on the child workers once they are compared to Alabama. At the end of her speech, the determination to change the laws is seen since she also ends …show more content…

Her tone of voice, choice of words, and rhetorical questions moves people into thinking that the child labor laws are ridiculous and urges them to take action. The examples and words she uses was to show what goes behind the factory doors and what the country has turned to depend on. A nation is suppose to treasure and support the children in their education because they will become possible future leaders and live here. If a country depends on the work of children to support the production of goods, the future generation won’t be as educated as they should’ve been. She’s almost speaking the minds of the listeners through her rhetorical questions and answers them with what they should do if they don’t want this to continue. The strategies she uses made a great impact on people through her speech because she also provides an

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In Florence Kelley’s 1905 speech to the convention of National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, her main overall purpose is to fight for better child labor laws and improved conditions for working women. The two main strategies Kelley uses to convey her message about child labor to her audience is logos and pathos. The text is broken down into two different sections as sections one from line 1 to 54 main rhetorical strategies is logos and from line 55 to 95 main rhetorical strategy is pathos.

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Throughout the speech she repeats one particular phrase, “while we sleep.” “And while we sleep, little white girls will be working tonight in the mills in those states.” “ And they will do so tonight, while we sleep.” “ Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in the textile mills.” Kelley’s repetition of this makes the audience feel some type of emotion.

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Children from as young as the age of 6 began working in factories, the beginning of their exploitation, to meet demands of items and financial need for families. In Florence Kelley’s speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia 1905, Kelley addresses the overwhelming problem of child labor in the United States. The imagery, appeal to logic, and the diction Kelley uses in her speech emphasizes the exploitation of children in the child labor crisis in twentieth century America. Kelley’s use of imagery assists her audience in visualizing the inhumanity of the practice.

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Child Labor Analysis Child Labor was one of Florence Kelley’s main topics at a speech she gave in Philadelphia during a convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Kelley talks about all the horrors children were going through and the injustices they were suffering. She talks of the conditions children working in, the hours they were going in, and all in all, how wrong child labor was. Her purpose for this was to gain support of people to petition for the end of child labor. Kelley’s appeals to Ethos, Pathos and Logos through the use of great rhetoric is what allows her to achieve her purpose.

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In America’s history, child labor was fiercely criticized. Many activists of child labor laws and women’s suffrage strived to introduce their own viewpoints to the country. Florence Kelley was a reformer who successfully changed the mindset of many Americans through her powerful and persuading arguments. Florence Kelley’s carefully crafted rhetoric strategies such as pathos, repetition, and sarcasm generates an effective and thought provoking tone that was in favor of women’s suffrage and child labor laws. Florence Kelley uses pathos continuously throughout her speech.

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In conclusion, Florence Kelley used many rhetorical strategies in order to call her audience to arms against child labor laws. She accuses the laws of being unjust and labels the children prisoners. In the last two paragraphs, Kelley refers to her cause as the "freeing of the children." She believed the children were robbed of their basic rights and freedoms by labor laws and used strategies such as pathos, parallelism, and illustration to convince her audience to help her "free

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