What Is Florence Kelley A Child Labor Speech

The first meeting to discuss women's rights took place in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. It was there that Elizabeth Cady Stanton proposed equal suffrage for women. At that meeting, they drafted the Declaration of Sentiments which illustrated the oppression American women were facing. Although countless, courageous women would sustain this fight, it would be 1920, 72 years later, before Congress ratified the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote (Timeline of Women's Suffrage). The defining moment in this long battle occurred in 1917 when Carrie C. Catt gave her magnificent speech on women’s suffrage to Congress. Catt’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos, helped persuade Congress to pass the 19th amendment.

Florence Kelley delivered a speech to the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1905. Her speech is a plead for improving the existing child labor laws and working conditions. Throughout her speech, Florence Kelley utilizes many rhetorical strategies to convey her message about child labor laws, these strategies include: appeal to logos, parallel structure, and anecdote.

The nineteen hundreds: children were working through the night while the adults were sleeping. Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer, spoke out against this harsh reality. Fighting to improve child labor laws, she delivered her speech in 1905 at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, in Philadelphia. By incorporating anecdotes to emotionally appeal; shocking state statistics; and showing a strong, direct, and compassionate attitude towards children working, Florence Kelley reveals the harsh child labor laws and fights to improve their conditions.

In the new politic system of the United States the women’s rights were coming to surface. In the reshaping of the government system and the advances that the country was having, the status of the women were as well changing from 1850-1846. Some women had the opportunity for education and other had more participation in religion. For instance, Women played an increasing role in public education during the reform era. Catharine Beecher, a sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, encouraged women to enter the teaching profession because their natural role suited them to the care and nurturing of children. Women were very active during the reform of humanitarian reforms they were more active than ever. For instance, the spirit of reform was prevalent in the field of women's rights. Many women played a central role in a wide range of historical moral crusades. This reform was the beginning for the movement of women’s rights; they did not totally include all the women’s right but surely was the set point for women to be considered. Not only women participate for their women right but as well they participate in politics with the issue of anti-slavery. For instance, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were two female delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention held at London in 1840. Even

Guilt and lack of empowerment can cause people to stand up for what they believe in. Florence Kelley, a successful social worker delivered a speech in 1905 for the National American Woman Suffrage Association at Philadelphia. Passionately and pointedly, Kelley persuades her audience that if women were allowed to vote, then child labor laws could be fixed.

Generations of women fought courageously for equality for decades. The ratification of the Nineteenth amendment was vindication for so many women across the country. After having spent so many years oppressed and unable to make way for themselves, women everywhere were growing tired of being unable to own property, keep their wages and the independence that an academic education gave them. The decades that ensued brought with them various female activists, men that supported them and a division of its own within the movement. The women’s suffrage movement lasted 71 years and cam with great discourse to the lives of many women who fought for the cause.

Kelley utilizes factual information to assert her authority on the subject. She opens the speech with, “We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen who are earning their bread.” (Lines

The battle for suffrage was a long and slow process. Many women tried to initiate the fight for suffrage, like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. “These were the New Suffragists: women who were better educated, more career-oriented, younger, less apt to be married and more cosmopolitan than their previous generation.” (pg 17) Eventually, in 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified; allowing women to vote, but it was not any one person or event that achieved this great feat. It was the confluence of certain necessary factors, the picketing and parades led by Alice Paul, militaristic suffrage parties and the influence of the media that caused the suffrage amendment to be passed and ratified in 1920. But most importantly, they successfully moved both

Throughout her speech, Florence Kelly uses her diction to create imagery and convey her point. An example of this in Kelly’s speech is lines 18-22 where she says “ Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all 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.”(Kelly, 10). With attention to the word choice, Florence Kelly creates an image of a small girl working long into the night, making goods for people to buy, while the adults are at home sleeping in their beds. In this excerpt, she uses the three main phrases, while we sleep, little girls and deafening noise to help the reader picture what is happening with

cause she believed in, Kelley moved up in society by serving as the head of the National

Since capitalism has existed, children have been able to work. These children have worked in the harshest conditions and the longest hours. With thousands of children working in the United States, social worker Florence Kelley decided something needed to be done about it. So on July 22, 1905, she delivered a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), analyzing, and explaining the problems with children in the workplace. She uses the rhetorical strategy, cause and effect, to exemplify the pros and cons of child labor at the time. Kelley later explains how her thoughts can reflect on the future of child labor in the United States.

Over the years people have been worried about their young children working in factories or many other dangerous circumstances. With in these years people have also been concerned with their equal rights. Women tend to be treated or paid unfairly when compared to their men colleagues. Before 1938 factories would hire children to do the same dangerous and high- risk jobs that fully grown men were doing. If there were fully grown adults getting injured on the job, one can only imagine what would happen to a kid. In 1923, women and some men tried to make everything equal for women. They worked towards something called equal rights. This movement was thought up by people who supported women's rights, to make things more equal. Women wanted fair

Florence Kelley is considered one of the great contributors to the social rights of workers, particularly women and children. She is best known as a prominent Progressive social reformer known for her role in helping to improve social conditions of the twentieth century. She has been described as a woman of fierce fidelity (Goldmark, 1953). Kelley was a leading voice in the labor, suffragette, children’s and civil rights movements. She was also a well-educated and successful woman, a rare combination during the turn of the twentieth century.

As a leader in the women’s suffrage movement Ames had many successful accomplishments. When lawmakers passed a bill that limited women time to register to vote Ames and her fellow suffragettes organized and help women to get to locations to register. Ames and her co-workers registered 3,800 women in 17 days and provided voting instructions and mock elections to prepare the women to responsibly use their new franchise. She coordinated intensive voter education to give women the skills they needed to vote. In addition, when

This new generation of activists fought with this new agenda for almost 20 years until a few states in the West began to extend the vote to women. The Eastern and Southern states still refused to give in, but this didn’t stop the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1916, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the NAWSA, worked vigorously to get women’s organizations from all over the country together and fight side by side. “One group of activists, led by Alice Paul and her National Woman’s Party, lobbied for full quality for women under the law” (Divine). She used mass marches and hunger strikes as strategies, but she was eventually forced to resign because of her insistence on the use of militant direct-action tactics (Grolier). Finally, during World War 1, women were given more opportunities to work, and were able to show that they were just as deserving as men when it came to the right to vote. On August 18th, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, allowing women to vote. This drawn-out and arduous battle opened a new window of opportunity for women all over the country. Significant changes in both social life and job availability began to create what is now referred to as the “new women.”