Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Child labor was a serious problem in the United States during 1900s. Florence Kelley, a social worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and improved working conditions for women, delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In her speech, Kelley conveyed her message about child labor through her appeal to pathos and logos. Kelley’s use of logos gives her credibility through stating facts and statistics of child labor. She reveals the range of the problem by identifying the many states that allow children to participate in child labor. “In the cotton mills of Georgia,” “In the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania,” “North and South Carolina and Georgia place no restriction upon the work of children at night,” display how child labor is happening all over the country. Kelley informs her audience at the beginning of her speech about a statistic of the

She describes the “deafening noise” of the spindles in textile mills to tap into the audience’s sense of justice and sorrow for the young girls. These little ladies sacrifice their health for the luxury of the people who wear the ribbons and silks that they make. Kelley repeatedly calls out to the audience using the word “we” to signify that the problem is not only the children’s, but society as a whole. “What can we do to free our consciences?” she states in line 85. She is asking the audience to step up and make a change, to imagine how they would feel if their child was forced to sacrifice school for little beasts of burden. On July 22, 1905, Florence Kelley delivered a speech on the urgency to make a difference in the world: fight against child labor, save children from sisyphean tasks, and encourage the education of children all over the United States. Her audience was greeted with statistics and facts on child labor and later struck with the sorrow for children who have such pitiful