Florence Kelley Rhetorical Analysis

Child labor laws were set into place to protect young children from harsh jobs that would block their educational growth and be a danger to their overall health. Most common during the Industrial Revolution, children worked to provide to their families. Many could not get by with the little amount of money, which meant that most children were sent off to the factories to work. Although this means that the families would be getting by, was it worth the negatives that it brought to children? Florence Kelley disagreed with child labor and spoke out on the possibility of beginning a movement or law to change it. Kelley used the rhetorical techniques logos and pathos, to argue her message, in an attempt to bring people together to obtain child labor laws.

When starting her argument, Florence Kelley uses facts and statistics to show the increase of young, female workers. She states, “ No other

portion of the wage earning class increased so rapidly from decade to decade as the young girls from fourteen to twenty years” (Kelley 8). She proves that the number of young female workers has gone up more than the other groups. She shows her use of logos as well as when she explains, “ but no contingent so doubles from census period to census period (both by percent and by count of heads), as does the contingent of girls between twelve and twenty years of age” (Kelley 12). Florence uses pure facts of the growing numbers to convey her message against child labor.
The most common rhetorical strategy Florence used was pathos, or the connection of the emotions of the readers to her writing. She set the scene of the young girls working in the factories to influence an emotion from her audience. She writes, “ 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” (Kelley 18). She stresses the hours they work while others go about their daily lives. Again Florence makes the emotions tie in with, “ 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 32). She makes sure that the audience knows that the children are working while others are more privileged to not be in the same position as them.
Kelley, throughout her entire use of pathos, is tapping into the emotion of guilt.

She does so by repeating the word “our”. Starting at line 66 she writes, “ The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings; our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton underwear in the cotton mills. Children braid straw for our hats, they spin and weave the silk and velvet wherewith we trim our hats” (Kelley 66). The repetition of “our” is meant to remind the audience that the young are working on things we use and need. In a way this is almost blaming the audience, or guilt tripping them, for what child workers go through for the people's’ needs. She continues sparking the powerful use of guilt when she says, “ They carry bundles of garments from the factories to the tenements, little beasts of burden, robbed of school life that they may work for us” (Kelley 75). She wants to audience to understand that that child work is taking away from their childhoods. Kelley wants the reader to compare their lives to those of children

workers.
Florence Kelley uses both logos and pathos to show her message of distaste about child labor. She taps into the statistics to bridge the facts to the emotions. Kelley repeatedly paints a picture with descriptive language to make the reader feel guilt. In hopes that that guilt with translate to a movement against child labor, she even mentions, “ I shall use this power in every possible way until the right to the ballot is granted, and then I shall continue to use both” (Kelley 81). She does not plan to stop working for this cause and hopes that the people will do the same.