In the past, child labor laws were very controversial. Children began working at a young age and performed the same tasks as adults. They would work in factories and mills, and certain jobs they performed caused many accidents which led to their deaths. Many social reformers tried to put an end to child labor and eventually succeeded. One of these reformers was Florence Kelley, who delivered a child labor speech before the National American Women Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, 1905. Before the National American Women Suffrage Association, women were not petitioning the right to vote, they were petitioning the need for child labor laws. Florence Kelley was really passionate about this issue. She was well articulated, which caused many …show more content…
She then proceeds to evoke pathos by stating that while the audience sleeps, little girls are making items through the deafening noises of the factories’ machines. Kelley then follows to judge the southern states for having “white girls” working on cotton mills for longer than eight hours. By emphasizing “white girls” she is comparing them to African Americans, and in her own words telling her audience “this could be your daughter.” Kelley compares the northern states to the southern states by stating that the northern states are more enlightened than the southern states by not making children work as much, but then proceeds in comparing New Jersey to the southern states, blaming them for influencing the state. She uses pathos to create a sense of innocence that only a child has and that should be preserved and not exploited in factories. “A girl of six or seven years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night. And they do so tonight while we sleep.” Kelley uses this wording to evoke pathos and make her audience feel guilt. What this does is calls out their ethical values until they fix it. Meanwhile, the states that have child labor prohibited are praised by her. She says those states are in correct direction to the …show more content…
Kelley is a women and a social reformer, a social reformer fights to fix what the government overlooks. In her speech, she makes many ethical points, most which points out the belief that children are innocent and should not be treated as working adults. This makes her seem trustworthy because it shows she cares about the children, so it appeals to the parents listening to her speech. Kelley’s argument relies on the authority of the mothers listening and the approval of the working voter men. Kelley needs the voting men to vote on behalf of women since, during this time, women could not vote. She continues to shame her audience by claiming that they should sacrifice their luxuries for the sake of the children. She compares the children to “little beasts of burden”, a phrase from the bible that means donkey or slave, to further shame her audience. She claims that child labor is evil, but she doesn’t mention why the children take up those jobs. She doesn’t mention that the children who work are severely poor and are just trying to support their family. Kelley’s speech is a social argument. If something were to happen because of this speech, the children would be the ones who would greatly benefit. The factory owners would be the ones greatly impacted if something did happen. They would lose money and probably
She wanted to change the law for the unfairness of the children. The text states, “They would march the mill children all the way to the president of the United States-Theodore Roosevelt.” (Josephson, 6). The author explains what she is planning to do to hopefully change the mind of President Roosevelt. The author writes, “Their bodies were bone-thin, with hollow chests.” …”’some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckles’ - victims of mill accidents.” (Josephson, 5). This means that the children weren’t being fed properly and they were injured while working. Some of the children lost body parts because the job was too
During the early 20th century in the U.S, most children of the lower and middle class were workers. These children worked long dangerous shifts that even an adult would find tiresome. On July 22, 1905, at a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley gave a famous speech regarding the extraneous child labor of the time. Kelley’s argument was to add laws to help the workers or abolish the practice completely. Kelley uses pathos to highlight the need for change and diction get her point across to the audience.
In Florence Kelley’s 1905 speech to the Philadelphia convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association, she accentuates the obligatory need to reform the working conditions for young children.
Throughout Kelley’s speech, she utilizes imagery to help prove her view that child labor is wrong. She points out that while “we sleep” there are “several thousand little girls… working in the textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool.” The listener of the speech can visualize the dreadful scene in which thousands of little girls are working in the textile mills. This imagery evokes a sense of sorrow from the listener. Also, the word “deafening” adds to the listener’s understanding that not only are young children working, but they are working dangerous and dreadful jobs. She also depicts an image of a girl who “ on her thirteenth birthday” could work from “ six at night until six in the morning.” This detail suggests that there is little happiness in the lives of these young children
Kelley describes working all night long as a “pitiful privilege” in lines 44 and 45. In addition to yielding such a sarcastic tone, this rhetoric device also shows how pitiful it is that children see their 14th birthday not as a happy milestone that is normally expected, but as an opportunity, like Kelley said, a privilege to start working. This pushes her audience to consider that though this may indeed be a beneficial privilege to some, it is a great injustice in the eyes of another. This injustice is later reiterated by the comparing child labor to “great evil” when she states no one will be able to free their consciences from participation in such injustices until women are given the right to vote. Not only does this intensify the leading purpose of her speech, but further motivates her audience to take action in fighting for her cause.
Kelley uses the logic brought up by such questions to emphasize how giving women the right to vote is a good vote can help end child labor. Another example of this is her description of a little girl who, “on her thirteenth birthday, could start away from her home at half past five in the afternoon, carrying her pail of midnight luncheon”. The emphasis on the innocence of children portrays the pity and sympathy that the audience should feel. She creates a scenario that seems much too real when she says “The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear.
On July 22, 1905, social worker and reformer, Florence Kelley, stood in Philadelphia before an audience and presented a speech about the idea of combing the women’s suffrage and child labor issues in order to make more probable advantages in both departments. Her speech was given in away to entice the crowd and motivate them to fix the issues at hand. She was able to effectively able to give her speech by appealing to the crowds emotions and by using ironic diction and syntax to engage the crowd into the words she was saying and backing them up with substantial evidence.
She was now getting into the field of labor agitation and would change America forever. In 1903, she organized a march in which children, mutilated from their jobs, marched the streets to the home of Theodore Roosevelt in order to draw attention to the grueling and wicked child labor laws. “Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.” This shows how after several attempts from previous progressive reformers, Jones was the only one whose protests were powerful and effective enough to open people’s eyes to the issues. A reason that Jones had become so effective was that of her exploration and observations. She frequently visited factories to observe the cruel working conditions in which people worked in and interviewed workers to get a feel for them and understand the brutality of the work. She stated herself that because of rough conditions, “The brain is so crushed as to be incapable of thinking, and one who mingles with these people soon discovers that their minds like their bodies are wrecked. Loss of sleep and loss of rest gives rise to abnormal appetites, indigestion, shrinkage of statue, bent backs and aching hearts.” By examining workplaces, she was able to gather empathy and sympathy for the workers who were suffering.
In the first paragraph, Kelley explains the ages of these labor-bearing children by saying that “they very in age from six...sixteen in more enlightened states.” The use of “enlightened” is purely sarcastic, and the speaker does not have any respect for those states that allow sixteen year old girls to do heavy-labor. For anyone in the audience that knows the literal definition of “enlightened,” they, too, would be squirming in their seats at the thought of child labor, even at sixteen years of age, being “enlightening.” In her fourth paragraph, she touches more on “enlightened” states by talking about Alabama. She uses “child[ren] under sixteen.. shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than 8 hours,” and then says that Alabama “does better... than any other southern state,” to again show her sarcasm towards these states...
She also appeals to the ethos at the very end of the speech by identifying three separate and conflicting social classes that are based on intelligence and wealth. She describes the first class as being “intelligent and wealthy members of the upper classes who have obtained knowledge of birth control and exercise it in regulating the size of their families.” She then compares the highest class to the mid-level group by saying they too are “equally intelligent and responsible” but can not gain knowledge and therefore can not plan their families. By comparing the first two alone it appeals to ethics as two groups with equal knowledge and wealth should both have knowledge and control over the size of their families. She ties in the last group by saying that the lowest group is “irresponsible and reckless” and states that this group reproducing in large numbers is bad for society as it will spread disease and the increase in size of this “feeble-minded” group.
Factories were utilizing children to do the hard work. They employed children as young as five or six to work as many as twenty hours a day. According to Document C, children worked in factories to build up muscles and having good intellect in working rather than getting an education. They became a different person rather than conventional children. There were additionally health issues due to child labor: rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing loss, higher chemical absorption rates, and developing ability to assess risks. Progressive Era reformers believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society. They believed that children should be protected from harmful environments, so they would become healthy and productive adults. In 1912, Congress created the Children’s Bureau to benefit children. The Keating-Owen Act was passed in 1916 to freed children from child labor only in industries that engaged in interstate commerce. However, it was declared unconstitutional sinc...
Poor, young children being forced to work nearly 24 hours day is a terrible evil that is no longer necessary in the 21st century, thanks to those willing to fight against it. One of those people was lover of freedom Florence Kelley. At the National American Woman Association on July 22, 1905, she gave a speech urging the women to ally with “workingmen”, ln 89, to vote against unfair child labor laws. In her speech, Kelley uses appeals to empathy, sympathy, logic, ethos, repetition, word choice, tone, and current events to defend her case.
But how did this all start to happen? It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t a one-person battle. Women wanted the same rights as men already had. But they didn’t just stop there, women played a major role in the rise of the child labor laws, stood up for minorities, and they wanted prostitution to end. Most people who opposed woman suffrage believed that women were less intelligent and less able to make political decisions than men were. Opponents argued th...
The antagonist, Sethe, is not keen to let her kids end up in such a miserable lifestyle that she lives. Defending that she would rather see them away from the wretchedness of Earth and instead dead in Heaven. Slavery is an exceedingly cruel and nasty way of life, and as many see it, living without freedom is not living. Slavery dishonored African Americans from being individuals and treated them just as well as animals: no respect and no proper care. For example, Sethe recalls the memory of her being nursed as baby by saying, "The little white babies got it first
This impactful photograph is the result of an emphasis placed upon the appearance, situation, and story of a young girl. The Carolina Cotton Mill tells the tale of hardships faced by child laborers. Sadie Pfeiffer became a representative for all children who were forced to mature sooner than should have been expected of them. In the final analysis, Hine provided the world with an illustration that spoke of the challenges faced by America’s children and prompted awareness of the inhumanity that was child