Analyzing Florence Kelley's Speech About Child Labor
Work is required to earn the money to provide the necessities of life, but this duty should never be given to children. In her speech, Florence Kelley uses logos, pathos, and a shift to voting rights to build her argument of why child labor laws need to be enforced nationwide. The first way the author builds her argument is through logos, a logical appeal. Kelley utilizes an assailment of facts and statistics to lead her assertion. This is effective because of the shockingly large number of children working absurd and miserable hours.
Florence Kelley was the first woman factory inspector. What is your issue? was a social and political reformer. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today. How did it come about? Although the Illinois Manufacturers Association fought Kelley and won a Supreme Court battle declaring the limitation of women’s wage labor to 8 hours per day to be unconstitutional, and although Kelley lost her job as chief factory inspector, she was undeterred.
On July 22nd, 1905, Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women, delivered a speech on child labor before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia. The purpose of her speech was to convince her audience that the only way to stop child labor was by allowing women the right to vote. Florence Kelley uses certain rhetorical strategies, such as pathos, diction, and an extensive use of figurative language, to appeal to her audience and accomplish her goal. Kelley’s speech is composed of a substantial amount of emotional appeals to aid her in connecting with her intended audience. In paragraph four she says, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy.”
Finding the fact that children from the age of “twelve to twenty years” are subject to labor heartbreaking. Florence Kelley’s speech, given at the National American Woman Suffrage Association, uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to turn the hearts of the audience against child labor, along with strengthening the argument for women’s suffrage. She does this to ultimately to argue that when women can vote, they will put a stop to child labor. While other rhetorical strategies, such as logos and ethos, serve mainly to impress the audience’s reason.
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.
“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” (Grace Abbott). The issue of child labor has been around for centuries. Its standing in our world has been irrevocably stained in our history and unfortunately, our present. Many great minds have assessed this horrific issue and its effect on our homes, societies, and ultimately, our world.
Florence Kelley was a women’s rights activist who gave a speech before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the summer of 1905 on the topic of child labor. This speech on child labor offers insight to the harsher lives that some children have to carry in comparison to some adults due to no child labor laws. Kelley’s writing was meant to persuade the audience to improve child labor laws and safety by appealing to pathos. Throughout the beginning of the essay, there’s repetition of the phrase: “[W]hile we sleep.”
A Woman’s National Duty In the early 1900s, industrialists began to utilize child labor as a cheap source of work. However, the conditions these children worked in were both unsanitary and unsafe, creating a group of reformers who wished to see children out of the workforce. Social worker Florence Kelley was among this group and spoke at the National American Women Suffrage Association in 1905. Throughout her speech to encourage women to fight for the vote to prevent atrocities like child labor, Kelley delivers her message to her audience with the use of rhetorical strategies including rhetorical appeals, rhetorical questions, and hortative sentences.
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.
Today when people think of child labor, they think of it as wrong and wonder who would make children difficult, laborious tasks. They wonder why some people did not try to stop it. Florence Kelley did try to convince people to end child labor. In her speech at the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she conveys her disdain for child labor by appealing to logos and pathos. Kelley draws the audience in immediately by appealing to logos (logic).
Florence Kelley was a social worker and reformer who fought against child labor. In order to recruit people to her cause, Florence delivered a speech to the National American Suffrage Association Convention regarding child labor. In this speech, Florence depicted the atrocities and injustices of child labor to paint a picture of the current situation to the women. Kelley attempts to recruit the women in the convention by engaging them with different emotions like despair, frustration, inspiration, and hope, as well as give several examples of the impact of child labor. Florence begins her speech by illustrating the atrocities of child labor such as poor working conditions, age, and amount of kids working, to show women how unjust child labor
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many countries were experiencing child labor. Labor worked extremely hard for long hours and didn't get paid well. This was extremely harsh for people who had low incomes, immigrants, and larger families. Mary Harris Jones made a big step in becoming a leader of a labor organization for workers getting better benefits, and more rights. Mother Jones’
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
During the period of (1859-1932), child labor was a major issue for children starting off at a certain age. According to the passage, there is a certain age requirement that children follow to forcefully work for one’s home. Southern state laws have a way of maneuvering working children no matter the condition or how long they will be working. States such as Georgia, children begin to work at age six and seven years in the cotton mills each night to make shoes, stockings, knitted underwear, and braid straw for hats that people purchase for an everyday use. On the other hand in Pennsylvania children age’s eight, nine, and ten work in coal-breakers risking their own lives working from day to night with no break.
Child labor was a great concern in the Industrial revolution but very few people did something to stop it. Women and Children were forced to work more than 10 hours a day with only forty minutes to have lunch. Elizabeth Bentley once said that they didn’t have any time to have breakfast or drink anything during the day. They worked standing up and if they didn’t do their work on time they were strapped (whipped). Children were treating like they were not important, like they didn’t deserve a better life.
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