On July 22, 1905, children’s rights activist, Florence Kelley, addressed the issue of child labor in her speech at the National American Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Throughout the speech, Kelley calls attention to the harsh working conditions and long hours that the working children, especially the young girls, endure in factories and mills. Kelley adopts a passionate tone to emphasize her dedication to the child labor movement and to persuade others to contribute to the movement in order to prevent the oppression that the working children face. Kelley employs repetition to emphasize the long hours that the children work, oxymoron to contrast the opportunities of the children to the conditions of working in mills, and rhetorical questions to point out the actions not being taken by legislatures and voting men. The first rhetorical device Kelley utilizes is the repetition of the phrase “tonight while we sleep” to emphasize the importance of what the rest of society does while the children work (18). Throughout paragraphs three through five, Kelley repeats the phrase three times to draw attention to …show more content…
The children “enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long” once they reach the legal working age in their states (44-45). The contrasting connotations of the words “pitiful privilege” demonstrate the idea that the limited opportunity provided to children does not actually benefit them due to the harsh conditions (44-45). The negative consequences outweigh the opportunity to receive money to support themselves and their family. The intended effect is to cause the audience to come to the realization that the opportunity to work is not always a privilege one wants to have, especially if that specific privilege means dealing with unwanted negative