Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley, a member of the women’s reform movement of the early 1900’s, actively fought against child labor. During this time period, women had not yet achieved suffrage, and children of poor families were sent off to work long hours in factories. Many children were barely educated and spent a majority of their lives in quiet obedience at looming machines. On July 22, 1905, Kelley gave a speech on the topic at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in Philadelphia. On account of this, Kelley’s audience was a group of like-minded individuals who believed in women's suffrage. In her speech, Kelley attempts to persuade her audience to speak out against child labor and to vote against it once suffrage

She draws attention to the fact that “two million children under the age of sixteen [are working]” (1-2). By incorporating evidence--or logos--into her speech Kelley relays to her audience the situation at hand. Next, Kelley employs the credible source of the US census to prove that as time goes on, the number of young women working increases rapidly (12-16). This provides an example of Kelley utilizing evidence even further in her speech, providing her like-minded audience the context of the situation at hand. Continuing her speech, Kelley applies imagery to gain the support of her audience. Kelley informs her audience that while they are all sleeping, little girls are working and listening to the “deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving” (20-21). This gives her audience a picture of what is happening in the factories that these girls are working in, and the description of the noise within the factories--imagery--leaves the audience with an idea of the poor working conditions of the young girls. This paragraph also utilizes a tie to emotional appeals, otherwise known as pathos, as it invokes sympathy in the audience due to the fact that they will be resting at home while all of these young girls suffer through long, night-shift hours. This use of emotional appeals invokes Kelley’s audience want to take action to stop the unfair suffering of these