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Rhetorical strategies
Rhetoric devices and strategies
Rhetoric devices and strategies
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It is easy to disregard the lives of others, especially of those outside one’s own, but does the fact that, tonight, several thousand children will restlessly work while the adults sleep not raise concern? Florence Kelly was a United States social worker who advocated for child labor laws and the improved working conditions for women throughout the early 1900s. During a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association Kelly skillfully employed the rhetorical strategies of imagery, pathos, and anecdote in order to sufficiently inform her listeners of the horrendous working conditions that many children were forced to endure. Through careful word choice Kelly’s use of imagery manages to evoke a sense of pity among her listeners towards
This collects extra support for her main cause, child labor laws. Children are meant to run, play, and be free, not work excessive hours in a heinous factory. By using logos, pathos, and a shift in topic, Florence Kelley effectively erects her argument to vote for, and create, child labor laws
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 use of statistics and data allows the readers to acknowledge the problem through clear margins. “After an educational campaign launched in 1905, stronger limits on child labor did pass the Legislature in 1906. Permitted work hours for workers under 16 were set at 12 hours daily”(Dorman). Explaining the history of child labor in Iowa and the lack of restrictions that were previously upheld helps the readers think about how different child labor laws were in the past, and why these restrictions were put into place. Dorman used dialect that makes him appear knowledgeable and intelligent.
July 22nd, 1905 Florence Kelly delivered a speech about the unfairness of child labor at a National American Women Suffrage Association conference. Throughout this speech Kelly uses rhetorical strategies such as repetition, sarcasm, and an appeal to the audiences emotions to express the issue of child labor in America. Kelley uses repetition in this piece to emphasize the importance of her argument about child labor. In paragraph two, talking about the rapid increase in the amount of fourteen to twenty year old women who are working, she says, “ Men increase, women increase, youth increase, boys increase.”
In Document 1, the National Youth Association was acclaimed by teen participant Helen Farmer. However, she also described her experience carrying large amounts of paperwork home that would often take all night to complete, which depicts the destructive nature of the program that many young workers were forced to endure. Besides chronicling her exploits in the NYA, Helen also articulated the strong obligation she felt to earn money due to familial pressures. This exemplifies the bias of the opinion that she probably felt was necessary to have due to the job she was given by the program rather than the way she truly felt based on the work she was forced to do. Ellen S Woodward, whose speech was excerpted in Document 6, argues that the Works Progress Administration helped impoverished schoolchildren and desolate female workers.
In Florence Kelley’s speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she brings to light the issue of child labour in a serious and somber tone. Using pathos and persuasive rhetoric, Kelley skillfully manipulates her fellow women to become motivated to gain the right to vote in order to take action against the evils of child labour. Kelley’s speech is filled with pathos, attempting to persuade her audience to realize the magnitude of the issue of child employment to pull the heartstrings of women. She introduces the problem as “two million children under the age of sixteen years old who are earning their bread,” showing the large number of young people currently working to earn money to make a living.
Although relatives were in the United States and earning money that did not mean that everything on “the other side” was going well, many family members were earning money, yet they were not sending/earning enough to provide for those who had stayed behind in Mexico. In order to have a better life children began to work and push themselves as much as needed in order to prove to others that they were exemplary and without equal. Many children entered the United States with hopes to find their relatives and work; however, the children were soon “captured” by the Works Progress Administration and “the organization argued that much more should be done to place these children in agricultural labor camps because they had demonstrated a remarkable ability to exceed employer expectations without making any demands” (189). The decision made by the Works Progress Administration had a negative effect, many children started to get exploited by middle-class individuals, children had to work without complaining but most importantly they were seen as “cheerful and illegal” (190). Children were seen as cheerful when in reality they were having a hard time coping with the situation; however, the children portrayed cheerfulness in order to seem exceptional while
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.
In Florence Kelley’s speech she talks about child labor and everything bad about it. She is speaking to the attendees of the Woman Suffrage convention; however, she is also speaking to the people of America as a whole. She is fighting to abolish the ridiculous working conditions of child labor She believes it is wrong to work a child an extended amount of time. This speech is also a way to gain the ability for women to vote.
Newsies shows how child labor impacted the way of life for many people in major cities around the country during the 19th century. The first way the movie demonstrates this is by showing how child labor kept companies in business and kept them
Florence Kelley’s speech about child labor at the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s convention, uses many rhetorical strategies in order to get people involved in the cause of potentially eradicating it all together. By using such strategies as informal language and repetition, along with many others; Kelley paints a picture of how abominable child labor is for each listener and explains that the issue cannot be
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.