Florence Kelley Speech Rhetorical Analysis

Finding the fact that children from the age of “twelve to twenty years” are subject to labor heartbreaking. Florence Kelley’s speech, given at the National American Woman Suffrage Association, uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to turn the hearts of the audience against child labor, along with strengthening the argument for women’s suffrage. She does this to ultimately to argue that when women can vote, they will put a stop to child labor.

While other rhetorical strategies, such as logos and ethos, serve mainly to impress the audience’s reason. Pathos goes beyond that and rouses the audience’s emotions and persuades their heart directly. With her iron-willed personality, Kelley uses emotional appeal again and again to tell the attendees at the National American Woman Suffrage Association about the hardships child laborers have to go through, including the sheer work many children had to do such as, “working eleven hours by day or by night”. Saying this lets the audience sympathize with the

Simply saying things without backing it up makes an argument worthless. Kelley uses pathos or logical appeal through evidence, when she lists facts such as “no contingent so doubles from census to census period (both by percent…) as the contingent of girls between twelve and twenty. They are in commerce, in offices in manufacturing” by stating this she gives evidence about how child labor is increasing more and more. This in turn gives her fuel to use her emotional appeal. As she can back up what she is saying. So, she builds a strong basis with evidence and then lets the fuel of that be used to make an emotional appeal.This is shown in the following sentence right after she says this fact, she adds the emotional appeal “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls.” So it is seen that she will state her evidence which lets and this strengthens the emotional appeal she adds