Rhetorical Analysis: Florence Kelley
In “Child Labor and Women’s Suffrage,” (1905) Florence Kelley argues that “we should enlist the workingmen voters...in the task of freeing the children from toil!” Kelley illuminates this by using rhetorical devices such as syntax, point of view, and juxtaposition to develop pathos and reveal the unfair and harsh conditions of the children “who are earning their bread” or in other words, working. She does this in order to inform her audience of the mistreatment of the working children and lack of regulations so that it persuades her audience to do something about this problem. Kelley directly addresses the workingmen voters because near the end of her speech she speaks about the enfranchisement of women and how the workingmen voters should vote for age and hour restrictions in labor.
Florence Kelley structures her sentences and organizes her ideas through sentence variety to boldly get her message across. For instance, she writes, ”The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories,” and continues to write in a parallel syntax form. This sentence structure makes the audience realize that all of the clothes they wear were made by children in the factories. This realization evokes a sense of guilt and sadness among her audience because all that they wear could have been made by their daughters or sons. The development of pathos and the use of “our” lets the workingmen know that everyone is guilty of this, but they are the ones that can help stop the children’s torture. She explains that these small children were “robbed of school life” so that “they may work” for the adults. By using parallel structure, she clearly explains that children should not have to sacrifice their innocence and childhoods and should be protected by laws. While Kelley has sentence variety, one that is most effective is interrogative sentences among the parallel syntax. She asks questions such as,”What can we do to free our conscience?” in order to spark interest from her readers and promotes self-analyzation. This technique allows the audience to really think about the consequences of no work hour regulations and think about the actions that must be taken to end it.
A selling strategy Kelley uses is point of view to develop pathos throughout her speech. By including children and how “boys and girls, after their 14th birthday” will work long hours, she puts the situation into perspective for the workingmen voters. Kelley explains that because there are no work hour restrictions, children who are “just tall enough to reach the bobbins” work up to twelve hours. She also uses the oxymoron,”pitiful privilege.” These are contradictory terms that were grouped together in order to emphasize the absurdity of the hours. This appeals to the emotions of the workingmen voters because majority of them are fathers. They themselves work in similar conditions so when Kelley serves the children’s point of view, they can connect to the exhaustion, dangers, and everyday struggles. When the children suffer, so do they.
Florence Kelley is able to provide juxtaposition for message clarity. She compares the child labor law regulations of Alabama to those of North and South Carolina, New Jersey, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. For instance, “Alabama does better than...North and South Carolina” because it has a law restricting “a child of sixteen years of age shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than eight hours.” By saying that one state “does better” than the other, she reveals that all the regulations have issues that need to be addressed. North and South Carolina has no restrictions, New Jersey permits children’s work all night long, and Pennsylvania permits twelve hours at night. These side-to-side comparisons help the audience realize that the children are suffering and changes need to be made.
The industries were making a substantial amount of profit off of cheap employees, meaning low wages, long hours, dangerous equipment, and unhealthy working conditions in the factories. The people behind those factory walls were overlooked and abused. The ones who suffered the most were the children. As a reformer, Florence Kelley advocated for child labor laws and improved working conditions. Her goal was to get restrictions and laws for the working children and because women could not vote, the workingmen were their only hope. Florence Kelley strategically uses the rhetorical devices syntax, point of view, and juxtaposition in order to successfully call the workingmen voters to help “free the children” from their agony.
