Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley’s Persuasion of Child Labor Laws A once hot topic became a now law-enforced face. Child labor has been a controversial issue and Florence Kelley was one of the many protestors that brought success to the child labor laws. She was an avid fighter and was not only against child labor laws but also woman’s suffrage. On July 22, 1905, Kelley gave and impeccable speech at the Convention of National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia about child labor laws. To successively persuade her listeners, Kelley used versatile amounts of strategies, ranging from repetition of key words, to ethical appeal and even inserting political allusions. Florence Kelley utilized persuasive techniques to convey her message that she is dearly passionate about. Kelley used repetition in her speech to show that children are deprived from sleep and that they work the least favored shifts because of their age. “Tonight while we sleep...all the night through…tonight in the
mills…tonight, while we sleep…all the night through.” Kelley reiterates the words night and tonight to lay guilt over the audiences’ hearts. One can infer that she is trying to shed light on the fact that adults are sleeping idly and comfortably while the children are hard at work. Furthermore, Kelley tries to personalize the situation by uniting herself and the audience, as a whole, as “we”. “We do not… we prefer…But we are…we do to…we can do…,” she abuses the common pronoun “we”, in order to not only unify the audience and herself but also to show everyone is at par with each other; moreover, this shows that Kelley isn’t blaming anyone but rather exerting the issue to educate and persuade the audience about this ongoing situation. As an active protestor, Kelley knows and uses political allusions in order to give the audience hard facts in order to strengthen her point of view and show her passion for this issue. Alabama and New Jersey have a very young and short hour restriction in the age and work hour restrictions, respectively; furthermore, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia have no age or hour restrictions in place for the children at all. These are some of the many political allusions Kelley uses the make her point. The allusions were placed within the essay to imprint a stigma on the states with little or without child labor laws. This allows Kelley to pinpoint the states that need to be targeted for revision. “Now therefore, in New Jersey, boys and girls, after their 14th birthday, enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.” She spotlights one state to exemplify a law that takes advantages of young kids for labor; moreover, she uses an oxymoron “pitiful privilege” to show the way children work may be a grateful privilege for one but is an unfortunate way of life for others. Kelley utilized these strategies to strengthen her view by stating laws that need revision. Kelley also uses ethos to make an ethical appeal to the audience.
“The children make our shoes…knit stockings…spin and weave our cotton underwear…braid straw hats.” This statement makes one think, ethically, that what they are wearing was made by little children. Kelley used ethos to its fullest extent to further convey her message. She captivates the audiences’ hearts by pouring in sad entities that are prevalent in this harsh world. “They carry bundles of garments form the factories to the tenements, little beasts of burden robbed at school life that they may work for us.” Kelley states this in order show the harsh reality of what the children have to lose because the adults won’t stand up the child labor laws. She gives guilt to the audience in order to fully persuade them of the need of child labor laws. This was especially effective because she used this ethical appeal at a woman’s suffrage convention. Kelley used the ethos to take the hearts of the audience and pour passion into
them. Florence Kelley took her fiery passion against child labor laws and morphed them into appeals to persuade her audience into having the same views as she does and to stand up with her against child labor laws. Kelley used repetition, oxymoron, political allusions, and ethos to the fullest extent to successively persuade her audience.