Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

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Florence Kelley was a social worker who fought for child labor laws and she successfully improved conditions for working women. She delivered a speech for the National American Woman Suffrage Association and she used different strategies to convey and persuade the Association that child labor should end.
Throughout her speech, she mainly focuses on a little girl’s experience with child labor. Not only does that connect her purpose more with her audience because they are focused mainly on WOMEN suffrage, but even if that group of people wasn’t her audience they would still connect with the little girl because of her innocence and purity.
In a specific part of her speech Kelley describes the long night hours little girls work in some states, and in others it’s not even allowed. Throughout the paragraphs she repeats “while we sleep” to show how while we are peacefully sleeping, little girls are suffering every night. They work up to 11 hours at night in most states. In Alabama a law provides that children can’t work more than 8 hours. She provides this to make her audience feel a sense of sympathy and guilt for these young girls and so that they have a reason to change child labor in all states. …show more content…

Though this seems unfair they don’t break any law of commonwealth, and that’s how they got away with putting these little girls through these long hours. Kelley describes that while we have our midday luncheon little girls carry their pail of midnight luncheon. By showing that they start working at such young age for such long periods of time gives her audience the same sense of guilt as above. Even if they had to work these long hours, she tries to convince the association that it shouldn’t be on their birthdays nor for 11