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
“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