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Florence Kelley Rhetorical Analysis

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In 1905, a United States social reformer named Florence Kelley fought for child labor laws and improved working conditions for women. In July 1095, Kelley delivered a speech on child labor (and other topics) while in Philadelphia as a part of the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention. Within the speech, Kelley uses many notable rhetorical devices, which will be analyzed in this essay. Perhaps the most noticeable of Kelley’s rhetorical devices is the vast amount of facts and statistics contained within her speech. Whether discussing the rate at which the wage earning class increases to the current and past laws of states like Alabama and New Jersey, Kelley presents herself as knowledgeable and trustworthy. By sounding educated, …show more content…

Kelley could have simply stated “Would children still be working if mothers had the right to vote?” However, she does not focus on this topic. Instead, Kelley takes this opportunity to antagonize the Georgia Legislature, reminding the audience that they were the ones that voted in favor of children under 12 years of age working in the mills. Kelley’s critique of Georgia’s legislature is not where she stops, either. Kelley goes on to call out New Jersey’s legislature, and has already discussed the legislatures of Alabama, Georgia, North, and South Carolina. While not a traditional strategy (i.e. not one usually taught), Kelley masterfully directs the reader’s anger at the leaders of these states. It would easier for Kelley to discuss the impact of child labor on society, but Kelley’s presentation of an enemy gives readers someone to write to and attack—it presents a solution, of sorts. Kelley’s brilliant use of rhetorical strategies causes the reader to experience her message rather than gloss over it. Instead of stating something as basic as “Child labor is bad, and must be stopped,” Kelley takes the reader on a journey across America, and shows them the effects of child labor. Kelley does this by utilizing rhetorical strategies and their affect on how people interpret

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On July 22, 1905, Florence Kelley, a supporter of child labor laws and improved conditions for working women, delivered a powerful speech before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia. Through uses of rhetoric strategies, such as, evidence, diction, and imagery, Kelley illustrates her argument that working conditions and laws must be changed. Kelley begins her speech by presenting a list of statistics. As many as “two million children under the age of sixteen years” earn their bread (lines 1-2). No other group of workers increased as rapidly as young girls from fourteen to twenty (lines 8-10).

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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.”

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About one hundred thousand workers from six hundred different mills were on strike there. The strikers wanted their work cut from sixty to fifty-five hours. About a sixth of the strikers were children under sixteen.” ( 5, Josephson). As a result, she gathered a large group of mill children and their parents, shaming the mill owners of their actions.

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In Florence Kelley's speech (1905), she argues in favor of reducing child labor through the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, forcing the federal government to alter the amendment for child suffrage. Kelley expands her ideas by developing logos, pathos, and anaphora throughout the entire speech in an urgent argumentative tone. Using examples from children’s experiences, she successfully develops an effective argument that convinces the audience of the Suffrage Association to reconsider child labor laws and alter the working conditions of young children. Kelley heavily relies on logos in order to remind people of the economic (labor) issues the country is facing. For example, in lines 23-25, she states, “In Alabama the law provides that a child under sixteen years of age shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than eight hours, and

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The final way she uses rhetoric is through the rhetorical device, rhetorical question. Florence kelley uses rhetorical question to emphasize her purpose of getting people mainly women to vote against these child labor laws. She does this by asking two rhetorical questions. Florence Kelley states “if the mothers and the teachers in georgia could vote would the georgia legislature have refused at every session for the last 3 years to stop the work in the mills of children under 12 years of age” (59). Florence Kelley wants the people of that time to think about a scenario as if those people did vote against child labor.

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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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At the beginning of the speech, Kelley explains that “two million children under the age of sixteen are earning their [family’s] bread” and serve as a source of income to support households (1-3). Kelley then goes on to disclose that many states have no minimum age requirements for workers which can cause elementary-age children to work in factories and mills at night. Kelley uses the metonymy of bread to refer to money and explains how the child is an important source of income for many families. By elaborating on the ages at which children work, Kelley demonstrates to the audience that anyone can be a victim of the horrors of child labor and attempts to cause the audience to feel empathy toward the children in their situation. Similarly, Kelley employs the oxymoron of “deafening noise” to refer to the poor conditions that children face throughout the night.

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Kelley often proposes rhetorical questions to the listener to involve them as not only part of the problem, but part of the solution. Kelley helps the reader see the injustices within the voting system which votes on child labor laws by asking them if the Georgia Legislature would have “passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised?”(lines 59-62). She then, after explaining how women’s voices are needed in order to reform sweatshops that exploit children, asks the question to the women of NAWSA, “[w]hat can we do to free our consciences?”(line 85), making the listeners themselves think about and want to know what they can do to help. Kelley then tells listeners how they can help; by “enlist[ing] the workingmen voter, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil”(lines 94-96). Kelley, in inspiring a drive in her audience to rectify the injustices in child labor, and then giving her audience a call to action encompassing exactly what they can do to help, Kelley moves her audience to action in voting and enlisting voters to vote to help free the children from immoral

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According to Mother Jones, child labor was something so miserable and heart tearing. Mother Jones states, “Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did an eight-hour shift for ten cents a day”. She witnessed all these poor children work every day and go home exhausted and drained. They had to work in horrible conditions, managers had no sympathy for the poor little children some would get hurt and others would die from illnesses. Jones states, “Often their hands were crushed.

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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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Revision Statement: I first confirmed that my essay title is strong and engaging, so that my readers will be immediately interested. I made sure that my essay title was an engaging question such as: “Can the Act of Child Labor be Stopped? “ This question will cause my readers to be curios of the answer, resulting them to begin reading my essay. I confirmed that my essay was written with critical thinking and in-depth sentences so that my Child Labor topic is fully analyzed from every perspective. In order to create in-depth sentences, I added more details to some sentences.

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