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.
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.
In the speech, given at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, a United States social worker and reformer who successfully fought for child labor laws, Florence Kelley identifies how the working ages vary throughout States, compares different states and their child labor laws, and details the power that they have as american citizens, in order to prove that laws and restrictions need to be put in place for child labor, ultimately moving the people attending the convention to stand up to child labor and fight the government to put new laws in place. To convey her message about child labor, Florence Kelley identifies how the working ages vary throughout the States in order to show that the laws are inconsistent throughout the states. She wanted to have fair ages throughout all of the states because “they vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania).” She goes on to say that kids aging from six to sixteen are working dangerous, dirty jobs at such a young age.
Kelley asks her audience to consider, “What can we do to free our consciences?”. By assuming that the audience feels guilty about their children working nonstop throughout the night, Kelley creates a feel of initiative by inducing the audience to want to free themselves from their guilt. Whereas for the people in the audience who do not feel guilty, Kelley hints that they aren’t doing what it best for their children or country, establishing a sense of shame, as well as giving Kelley the authoritative voice at the convention. In addition, while much of the audience may have enjoyed the freedom of being a child, the fact that their children will never enjoy those freedoms also frightens the audience, causing them to trust in Kelley and in her ideas to stop child labor. With this rhetorical question, Kelley overall strengthens her argument, adding a sense of credibility and showing the power the audience has to stop child
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 reveals her distraught views about child labor. Kelley argues the cruelty of “little white girls” being forced to work at unreasonable hours of the night while the common adult is at home receiving a good night's rest. Kelley underscores her ideas with exemplification, comparisons, and repetition. She begins her address by stating factual evidence: “We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread.”
While child labor is perceived to have a dark and unsafe past, it used to play an important part in the US economy. The role that children played in the workforce during the 19th century focused on manual labor. “Through the first half of the 1800s, child labor was an essential part of the agricultural and handicraft economy of the United States. Children worked on family farms and as indentured servants for others. To learn a trade, boys often began their apprenticeships between the ages of ten and fourteen” (History.com).
In America’s history, child labor was fiercely criticized. Many activists of child labor laws and women’s suffrage strived to introduce their own viewpoints to the country. Florence Kelley was a reformer who successfully changed the mindset of many Americans through her powerful and persuading arguments. Florence Kelley’s carefully crafted rhetoric strategies such as pathos, repetition, and sarcasm generates an effective and thought provoking tone that was in favor of women’s suffrage and child labor laws. Florence Kelley uses pathos continuously throughout her speech.
In her speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Florence Kelly descriptively vocalizes about chid labor. She talks about the horrible conditions young children face in the states. Kelly uses repetition to put emphasis on little girls working in textile mills, “while we sleep” is repeated 3 times this makes the audience feel guilty for enjoying life while little girls are working. Kelly also uses pathos, appealing to the emotion of her
As a social worker and reformer, Florence Kelley utilizes asyndeton, juxtaposition, and rhetorical questions in her ardent speech for the attendees of the convention for the National American Women Suffrage Association to “enlist the workingmen voters” in helping with the implementation of more stringent child labor laws to encourage the protection of children, especially girls, from working in factories at such young ages. Kelley’s employment of asyndeton in the second paragraph as she states, “Men increase, women increase, youth increase in the ranks of the breadwinners…”, makes her speech more passionate and effective by speeding up its rhythm and pace. She applies this rhetorical strategy to segue into the fact that despite the increase across different demographics, none is so exponential as the growth of “girls between twelve and twenty years of age.” She describes this fact before the convention to depict the extensive hindrances this particular contingent faces.
Did you know that during the Industrial Revolution children were forced to work in factories, and were being paid very little money? I do not think that it is right to make a child work and not get to have an education. In the article “Child Labor” it talks about child labor and how it has changed over the years. In the article it says that during the Industrial Revolution children were hired for jobs on farms and factories because they could fit into small spaces easier and were easier to handle than adults.
Florence Kelley uses many rhetorical devices and strategies to convey her message about child labor and working conditions for women in the early 1900’s. Kelley uses each device effectively to produce a very powerful strategy. This strategy convinces the reader about her view and persuades them to take action. The beginning of the speech starts with a statistic, “two million children under the age of sixteen years are earning their bread.”
“Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time” (Grace Abbott). The issue of child labor has been around for centuries. Its standing in our world has been irrevocably stained in our history and unfortunately, our present. Many great minds have assessed this horrific issue and its effect on our homes, societies, and ultimately, our world.
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.
Child labor during the 18th and 19th century did not only rapidly develop an industrial revolution, but it also created a situation of difficulty and abuse by depriving children of edjucation, good physical health, and the proper emotional wellness and stability. In the late 1700 's and early 1800 's, power-driven machines replaced hand labor for making most manufactured items. Many of America 's factories needed a numerous amount of workers for a cheap salary. Because of this, the amount of child laborers have been growing rapidly over the early 1800s.
