The Suffragette Struggle
In her 1905 speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, social worker Florence Kelley fought for the abolishment of unfair child labor policies with the help of voters and petitions. In this fight, she depicts the horrible state of child labor throughout America, contrasting the “little white girls … of six or seven years” (29-33) from the women privileged enough to be in her audience, and speaks in both questions and exclamations, empowering her audience to do what they can about child labor. She does so in order to create further pressure for politicians and voters to change the state of labor legislation. These suffragettes may not have been able to vote for children’s rights, but Kelley still encouraged them to “enlist the workingmen voters … in this task of freeing the children from toil!” (94-96). …show more content…
She refers to the “boys and girls … [who] enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long” (43-45), using consonance and oxymoron to her advantage in order to persuade the many “mothers and … teachers” (55) via their emotional attachment to these children. Her solemn tone and emotional wording are woven into her statements about labor legislation: “little white girls in the mills in [North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will be] working eleven hours at night” (29-31). By combining narrative and factual evidence of these children’s plight, Kelley deepens the scope and understanding of her listeners with this dual appeal. These elements are integral to her fight, fueling both the hearts and the minds of those women in the
In her 1905 speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, social worker Florence Kelley fought for the abolishment of unfair child labor policies with the help of voters and petitions. In this fight, she depicts the horrible state of child labor throughout America, contrasting the “little white girls … of six or seven years” (29-33) from the women privileged enough to be in her audience, and speaks in both questions and exclamations, empowering her audience to do what they can about child labor. She does so in order to create further pressure for politicians and voters to change the state of labor legislation. These suffragettes may not have been able to vote for children’s rights, but Kelley still encouraged them to “enlist the workingmen voters … in this task of freeing the children from toil!” (94-96). …show more content…
She refers to the “boys and girls … [who] enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long” (43-45), using consonance and oxymoron to her advantage in order to persuade the many “mothers and … teachers” (55) via their emotional attachment to these children. Her solemn tone and emotional wording are woven into her statements about labor legislation: “little white girls in the mills in [North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will be] working eleven hours at night” (29-31). By combining narrative and factual evidence of these children’s plight, Kelley deepens the scope and understanding of her listeners with this dual appeal. These elements are integral to her fight, fueling both the hearts and the minds of those women in the