Lyddie's Argumentative Essay

Lyddie heard about all of the money a girl could make working in the Lowell, Massachusetts Mills. She makes her way there, to find that her dream of returning home with her family may never come true. This story is important because it talks about the Industrial Revolution and how the girls were mistreated, in danger, harassed, paid unfairly, child labor and terrible hours. While there are many reasons Lyddie should sign the

Though Lyddie does well in the factory, the working conditions there are deplorable. So when Lyddie’s friend, Diana Goss, begins to circulate a petition that argues for shortened hours, Lyddie has a difficult

On the other hand, Lyddie should sign the petition because then she would have more free time. Evidence that supports this is, “Time is more precious than money, Lyddie girl. If only I had two more free hours of an evening what I couldn't do.” This shows that the factory girls did not have a lot of free time and if they signed the petition they would have two or three more hours of free time and that Betsy (another factory girl and Lyddie’s roommate) believes that time is valuable. However, Lyddie does not need extra hours of freedom, but more money for her family and to pay off the

Lyddie refuses to accept that she is living in the conditions of a slave, and must focus on her work so she can get enough money for her farm. The author states,“She wasn’t a slave. She was a free woman of the state of Vermont, earning her own way in the world… she, Lyddie, was far less a slave than most any girl she knew of” (94). Working in the mills are all most girls do and convince themselves that they are working against their will and all the dangerous things in the factory. When Lyddie and her roommates get into a fight, Betsy sings this song to Lyddie.

Lyddie is already making more money than the other factory girls, and through the summer, in Chapter 12 ( I will Not be a Slave ) everyone in the factory work extremely hard, however, Lyddie is putting in greater effort than everyone else. With most factory girls gone, Lyddie is even more dedicated and this is shown through how much she gets paid. “The pay reflected her proficiency. She was making almost $2.50 a well above her $1.75 board. While the other girls grumbled that their piece rates had dropped so that it had hardly been worth slaving…” ( Paterson, p. 86)

One reason Lyddie should sign the petition is for better hours and wages. One example was one day at the mill Lyddie was telling herself “She needed the money. She had to have the money” (89). In this part of the book Lyddie is working on four looms just to earn a little bit of money. For all the hard work she is doing she needs more money and signing the petition may help in doing so.

LYDDIE Lydia (Lyddie) Worthen, a thirteen-year-old begins working in the Lowell textile mill to pay off her family’s debt. In Lyddie by Katherine Paterson, every girl has the choice of signing the petition Diana Goss is circulating. The air in the factory is murky and dense, the sound coming from the looms are unbearable, as well as the unfair hours and pay on the job. Lyddie should sign the petition, for the treatment she and many other girls received on their job are unjust.

In this essay, I will be talking about all the hardships that Lyddie had to push through and how bad their lives were back then. Many young girls, working as young as ten, had many harsh conditions already. Starting in chapter 3, which was the cutler's tavern, Lyddie got her first job. Even in the beginning, you could tell it was going to be a harsh time for the rude comments given by the owner. For example, “ “Go along” the woman was saying.

Lyddie wants to take her home, but she doesn’t have a home. So instead Lyddie decides to get Rachel a job in the factory. Rachel is now making money along with Lyddie. Which is another reason why Lyddie should not sign the petition. With this in mind, “What was the use of it anyway if the farm was gone?...

She expresses that, “North and South Carolina and Georgia place no restriction upon the work of children at night; and while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills in those states, working eleven hours at night,” (Line 27-31.) She uses the phrase ‘while we sleep’ to generate feelings of remorse among the listeners as the children work tirelessly on end while the adults are resting. She also uses the phrase ‘little white girls’ to create more sympathy as girls were seen as frail and innocent, and it creates the question ‘Why is an innocent and weak person being forced to work laboriously?’. She also states, “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 for us to buy,” (Line 18-22.) She uses auditory imagery in the pathos argument above for her audience to better understand the harsh conditions that the children work in.

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.

Also, Cooper and possibly many other children were unable to write but, they were literate which is a result of them not going to school. Without the ability to read or write, the village as a whole cannot advance industrially. As said before, Document 1 is not reliable on its own but, it becomes reliable because it correlates with Document 5. Document 5 is a description of a village written by the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor. In the description, the author said, “ of these there are 500 children who are entirely fed, clothed, and educated by Mr. Dale… Special regulations, adopted by Mr. Dale, have made this factory very different from the others in this kingdom” (Document 5).

In the industrial age many laws were enacted as of late, because of the rise and fall of companies taking power from government and state, many laws common place in the modern world, at that time were slowly gaining weight and of the time were detritus to the human society. As of what Elizabeth Bentley was questioned on, “C: You are considerably deformed in person as a consequence of this labor? B: Yes I am" (doc. 7). Kids working in the factories, one by one, suffered the consequences, and melancholy atmosphere that had personified the liabilities upon their human nature, burning through the skin, the bones, and the muscle that worked long hours, for the minimal sum. That minimal sum would only be a small fraction of the amount needed to feed and pay the expenses of the family.

In her speech addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association on the topic of child labor, Florence Kelley bases her argument, through the use of logos, cacophony, and rhetorical questions on the ethical merit against child labor. Establishing her main arguments, and introducing the topic at hand, Kelley provides statistical evidence by which she conveys the pandemic of child labor. By stating that, “We have, in this country, two million children who are earning their bread,” she establishes the idea that child labor is widespread throughout the union and further notes the idea by describing the alarming trend of low wage-earning children growing as a demographic. She also notes it is especially common for girls between the ages

Lydia’s’ got their total attention but at the high price because of the pressure that they put on her was unbearable. The Lee’s avoid any confliction by pretending among them that everything was fine. By that they had a silent tactic to mask underlying the problems that they didn’t want to confront. A family need to have a close relationship