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Rhetorical Analysis On Florence Kelley

493 Words2 Pages

In Florence Kelley’s passionate 1905 speech against child labor at the convention for the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, she employs multiple persuasive rhetorical strategies to guilt her audience and provoke action. Kelley, through illustrating the experiences of young children with auditory and visual imagery, juxtaposes her audience with the plight the children face, calling them to not perpetuate the problem and act. Kelley further utilizes statistical figures to connect with her female audience and call for change. She further connects her audience to the injustice, shaming their comfort in comparison to the danger and pain the children face. Florence Kelley illustrates the terrible conditions and grueling work children of the time dealt with through visual and …show more content…

This impact only furthers her audience's drive to act or boycott the textile industry they contribute to. Kelley, through utilizing statistics, connects and unites her cause with the concerns of her audience. Her audience’s primary concern, being a suffrage convention, is equality between men and women, so by pointing out a disproportionate amount of girls working compared to men, it manages to connect the issue of child labor to suffrage. “No other portion of the wage earning class increased so rapidly from decade to decade as young girls from fourteen to twenty years” no contingent so doubles from census period to census period (both by percent and by count of heads), as does the contingent of girls between twelve and twenty years of age”. Kelley, through this evidence, targets her audience’s primary concern. Her audience’s primary concern, being a suffrage convention, is equality between men and women, so by pointing out a disproportionate amount of girls working compared to men, it manages to connect the issue of child labor to

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