Florence Kelley Speech Analysis

During the 19th century, miners were exploited and exposed to inhumane working hours in their early teenage years. Florence Kelley delivered a speech focusing on the concerns of how child labor is portrayed as a type of abuse. Throughout her speech she used descriptive complex sentences, rhetorical devices and a passionate tone.

“For Alabama limits the children’s work at night to eight hours, while New Jersey permits it all night long.” With this statement she compared how the states are permitting these inhumane working hours to miners. In addition to that, this portrays to the audience the frustration, desperation, and depression that had taken over the feelings of the miners. “North and South Carolina and Georgia place no restriction upon the work of the children at night; and while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills in those states, working eleven hours at night.” This sentence creates an image of how miners look like while those who sleep felt the heavy fatigues that their bodies produce as a cause of these long hours. “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.” This statement gives credibility to what Kelley wants to emphasize her audience, child labor is a type of abuse. Therefore, the audience can easily picture and imagine children struggling
“Under the sweating system, tiny children….” This metaphor highlights that the sweats that were being put into hard work, was not the type of sweat that brings satisfaction. “... beasts of burden, robbed of school life…” This metaphor points out children have been exposed into labor systems rather than getting an