Florence Kelley's Speech On Child Labor

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Social worker and reformer Florence Kelley fought for child labor laws and improved working conditions for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the 1905 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention she delivered a speech giving her opinion on child labor. With the use of rhetorical devices, such as strong diction, rhetorical questions, and hypophoras, her speech successfully advocates for the end of child labor. First of all, Kelley’s powerful diction, or word choice, gives the audience vivid images of the horrible working conditions children were placed in. For example, in lines 18-20 she says, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms…” Not only does she bring light to the fact that children worked through the night, but she also acknowledges that they worked under dangerous conditions where they could damage their hearing. A second example demonstrating her intense word choice is in lines …show more content…
The first type, a rhetorical question, is used in lines 59- 62 when she wonders, “Would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised?” Knowing that she was speaking at a women’s rights convention, she tailored her speech for her audience by combining the issues of child labor and women’s suffrage into one, making the question very effective. Additionally, towards the end of her speech she uses a hypophora when she asks, “What can we do to free our consciences?” (Line 85) She continues to answer by explaining that women need to convince their husbands and other men to vote against child labor on their behalf. Again, she brings in the issues of women’s suffrage to aid her
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