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Florence Kelley Child Labor Speech

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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. The main devices being extraordinary diction, repetition, and sarcasm/irony. Outstanding diction is one of Kelley’s main rhetorical devices throughout the whole speech and what emphasizes her main appeal it being Pathos. From the beginning of the speech she starts appealing to Pathos, “We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread.” Although some people might have known of this, logos, her mentioning “under the age of sixteen years” and using the common metaphor “earning their bread” takes this to a more serious and emotional level. This are children which are working for adults, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons
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