Florence Kelly's Speech On Child Labor

In her speech to the National American Women Suffrage Association in 1905, Florence Kelly encourages women to fight against child labor by illustrating how the children suffer and by emphasizing the extent child labor has reached.
Children had it tough in 1905, Kelly illustrated this by using very powerful images. “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls are working in textile mills, all the night through.” “A girl of seven or six years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night”. By powerful phrases such as these, help Kelly portray that children really had a difficult life having to work long hours at such a young age. This helps persuade her audience because it makes them feel sympathy for the children because the children are the ones working day and night suffering.
Throughout almost all the paragraphs of her speech, Kelly refers to the long hours the children work and that their age is not fit for them to work where they’re all currently working. It’s a job for the adults (men). “We have, in this country two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread.” “We prefer to have our work done by men and women.” This shows that she clearly thought the jobs that the children were working were not appropriate for their age nor for their size. Labor was not for children and Kelly was really trying to get the audience to see that. She was also trying to get the audience to connect emotionally. Given that their all women, they all have the motherly instinct to protect and nurture