Rhetorical Devices

Rhetorical Devices Essay In Florence Kelley’s speech about child labor she emphasizes the need to obliterate these harsh working conditions for children. She uses pathos, rhetorical questions, and repetition to move the audience to act against child labor. With using these techniques throughout her speech she develops a well appealing argument for the audience to connect with. Florence Kelly incorporates pathos into her speech to enhance her argument. She wants the audience to feel for these children when she says, “while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight” (Kelly). The feeling she creates of guilt makes the audience draw in, feeling like they should help. As she uses ‘we’ she includes herself and creates the awareness that as we go through our daily life there are children who are working in the late hours of the night, who are supposed to be getting more sleep than her herself. This feeling of unsettledness that people do not realize to those children, sleep is a privilege and it is taken for granted every day. In addition to, Kelly ends her speech using pathos to give one last plead for people to help, “For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead” (Kelly). She makes the audience feel like they have extreme importance for the children then and in the future, that they have to act now before it’s too late, as she uses the word ‘dead’. Kelly uses rhetorical questions to engage the audience in her argument towards abolishing child labor. In her question she points out the importance of women with the child labor laws as she states, “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.” (Kelly). She points out how much of a difference it makes that these mothers do not have a say in this. With their say it would make a crucial impact on these laws, to get their own