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…
to follow her movement. She had a call to action which most followed. Kelley passionately conveys in her speech the evils of child labor and the states that allow it. She also states the number of kids currently working, and what a child has to go through working at a young age. She explains the items children produce working in factories, and how it is malignant. Her audience consists of mostly white upper-class mothers. Who do not work and are all highly educated and charitable. These women were most likely from the north because throughout the speech, the south is judged and compared to the northern states. Her audience being mostly women helps her emphasize the women suffrage movement. Her point that connects the two issues together is “if women would have been able to vote, this wouldn’t be happening”. In her speech, Kelley demonstrates statistics by providing the amount of children that work and what age they were.
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…
future. Kelley uses ethos, pathos, and logos throughout her speech, which means she is trying to convince her audience to follow her movement.
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
customers. Social reformers, like Florence Kelley, used this type of persuasive argumentation to get many of the American people on their side. Kelley used this to get, especially, the male vote on her side of the argument. By evoking a call to action at the end of her speech, which appealed to ethos, it gave a sense of patriotism, duty, and obligation to free children from hardships.
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
In Florence Kelley's speech to the people attending the NAWSA convention, she uses emotional appeal to motivate her audience to convince their male counterparts to legalize voting for women, and also to persuade the males to help put an end to child labor.
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.
Samir Boussarhane 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.
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.
In Florence Kelley’s speech, she discusses her anger about child labor. She gives numerous examples of how child labor is immoral and wrong, which creates a vindictive and scolding tone. Primarily through imagery, parallel structure, and exemplification, Kelley calls attention to the horror of child labor.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fight for equal and just treatment for both women and children was one of the most historically prominent movements in America. Courageous women everywhere fought, protested and petitioned with the hope that they would achieve equal rights and better treatment for all, especially children. One of these women is known as Florence Kelley. On July 22, 1905, Kelley made her mark on the nation when she delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, raising awareness of the cruel truth of the severity behind child labor through the use of repetition, imagery and oxymorons.
Florence Kelley’s address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1905) touches upon both the social and political aspects of the need for reform regarding child labor laws. By revealing the shocking truth about how young children around the country work for long hours in inappropriate conditions, Kelley is able to emphasize the urgency of this situation. Simultaneously, she defends women’s suffrage by presenting the logical statement that there would be laws to prevent extreme child labor if women had the right to vote; more progress could be made if women and men worked together, starting with women’s right to vote. In her address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association,
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.
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...
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
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...
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.
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