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.
The age range of the women workers were from age fifteen to age twenty-four and very few male workers worked in this factory. The reasoning for these women workers to work long, hard hours helped them by “sending brothers to high school, to art school, to dental college, to engineering courses” (p. 96). Most of the work was as simple as “cutting threads, which can be done by an unpracticed girl of fourteen” (p. 44). Despite the harsh conditions of this factory, they only paid their workers six dollars a week and extra money could be made if they worked the whole week. These workers would hunch over hefty and risky sewing machines that only worked by foot pedaling.
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.
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.
The women would had experienced anything from sexual harassment, rubbed up against or felt on, to being locked into a room until they had finished their shift . Often the bosses would refer to the young preteen or teenage girls as the “working girls” . The working conditions of the women and young children could only be described as slave conditions, one worker described her experience while working for the Triangle Waist Company, “[w]e were like slaves,’ complained one women. ‘You couldn’t pick your head up. You couldn’t talk.
Florence Kelley was an activist who fought against child labor in the late 1800'-early 1900's. She fought very hard for child labor and for better working conditions for our women. On the day of July 22, 1905 Kelley gave her speech regarding her reasoning of why child labor should end. To get a better understanding of her speech Florence Kelley implies pathos, ethos, and logos,which will catch the audience attention. The author reflects the sense of ethos playing the role of Florence Kelley.
“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.
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.
The late 19th century consisted of rigid work hours for children, the growth of strikes, and the use of yellow journalism. It was a challenging time for anyone below the upper class to live in. This is demonstrated throughout Newsies, a Broadway Musical displaying the challenges from this time period. Child labor, a major part of the movie, was the way of life and consisted of young children doing hard work as a vital part of the nation’s economy and income of families of the time. Another part of the movie, strikes, were the people’s way of refusing to work as a result of not getting their desires.
What was the most eye opening about this was she didn’t consider what she did as a child as child labor because throughout her family and the town she lived in children working was seen as a norm. If anything she said this was something that benefited her. She was able to learn skills and basic household duties that put her ahead of everyone else. She thought this make her more responsible and disciplined. The most important factor was when finding a job as she got older it was easier to find one and the work wasn’t as difficult as what she experienced as a child.
Child labor during the 18th and 19th century did not only rapidly develop an industrial revolution, but it also created a situation of difficulty and abuse by depriving children of edjucation, good physical health, and the proper emotional wellness and stability. In the late 1700 's and early 1800 's, power-driven machines replaced hand labor for making most manufactured items. Many of America 's factories needed a numerous amount of workers for a cheap salary. Because of this, the amount of child laborers have been growing rapidly over the early 1800s.
Kelley asks her audience to consider, “What can we do to free our consciences?”. By assuming that the audience feels guilty about their children working nonstop throughout the night, Kelley creates a feel of initiative by inducing the audience to want to free themselves from their guilt. Whereas for the people in the audience who do not feel guilty, Kelley hints that they aren’t doing what it best for their children or country, establishing a sense of shame, as well as giving Kelley the authoritative voice at the convention. In addition, while much of the audience may have enjoyed the freedom of being a child, the fact that their children will never enjoy those freedoms also frightens the audience, causing them to trust in Kelley and in her ideas to stop child labor. With this rhetorical question, Kelley overall strengthens her argument, adding a sense of credibility and showing the power the audience has to stop child
In her speech, written to persuade her audience to help put an end to child labor, Florence Kelley employs many rhetorical devices. America in 1905, we learned, was riddled with inadequate labor laws, as well as working conditions. In order to convey her message, that these unethical statues need to be amended, Kelley uses rhetorical strategies such as pathos, parallelism, and illustration. Pathos is found throughout the entire speech, particularly emphasizing the horrific jobs the children were performing under terrible conditions and for countless hours. The descriptions of these appeal to the readers emotions, as the facts that she shares depict scenes we consider unusual even for adults.
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.
But not all work done by children should be accepted as child labor. In other words, if a work doesn’t harm child’s health or personal development (educational issues), it is generally accepted as something positive and useful. Such activities develop children’s skills, provide experience and formulate them to be part of society. The term “Child Labor” is when children do work that damages their health or hamper mental or physical
