Throughout this speech, Florence Kelley addresses The Philadelphia Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1905, to bring attention to the working conditions of young children across the nation. Kelley’s rhetorical strategies are, listing examples of the appalling working conditions in a repetitive manner and appealing to ethos and pathos to persuade her audience. Kelley creates a compelling argument that captures the audience and throws them into the issue and then persuading them to join her battle. Kelley forms strong personal and emotional statements that strikes the hearts of the audience. She captures the hearts of the mothers and fathers in the audience and then encourages them to empathize with victims. For example, In the beginning of her speech Kelly opens her speech by showing the audience a bird’s-eye view of the whole problem. She states that “over two million children under the age of sixteen years” had to work. In an obtrusive manner, she dramatically puts this statement out there for the …show more content…
In the body paragraph, Kelley uses the oxymoron in Line 44 to 45, it says “enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.” She uses this to describe the hypocrisy and unfairness of the laws in New Jersey. After exploiting the true nature of the work conditions, she goes on again to say that “boys and girls under the age of 12 had to spend their developing years in factories.” This shows her usage of pathos, again relating with the parents in the audience, she is saying that these children are developing in harmful conditions which could affect their health, and undoubtedly any parent would want the best health for their child, therefore making the parents sympathize once again with the children. Assuming the vast majority of the audience are parents, this is a clever usage of pathos and