Florence Kelley's Argument Against Child Labor

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As an activist against child labor it would only seem reasonable that Florence Kelley would deliver a speech on the evils of child labor-however- this speech about child labor is a mere pawn in Kelley’s strategy for her ultimate argument. Kelley knew that her audience was a group of women and because she knew her audience well she used emotional appeal to make her argument. Kelley’s entire speech may look as if she’s fighting against child labor but it’s just a mere deploy; the true purpose of Kelley’s speech is about women’s suffrage. Her use of language and emotional appeal are what ultimately help her in her success with her argument. Kelley knew her that the way she was going to successfully appeal to her audience was by using emotional appeal. …show more content…

The emotional appeal is what ultimately will attract her audience’s attention because it deals with child labor and there are mothers, sisters, and daughters in the audience. Kelley uses imagery when appealing to the emotional side of her argument. The audience would see these “several thousand little girls” working in the mills “longer than eight hours” while they “enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long” and feel the pang of guilt she was trying to create. The reason this strategy was successful was because her target audience is vulnerable to emotion which makes them more sympathetic. The emotional appeal, however, serves as a distraction for her to introduce her true intentions. She provides this imagery of little girls working and how horrible it is and through all that she states a problem through her imagery and immediately follows this problem with a simple solution; which is voting. The emotional appeal serves as a pathway to her argument, the problem is stated, then is answered by women’s right to

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