Florence Kelley, social worker and reformer, in her child labor speech (1905), argues for the creation of child labor laws. Ms. Kelley persuades her audience against the current child labor conditions through the utilization of convicting diction, moving imagery, and saddening emotion.
By enacting the use of such rhetorical devices the speaker is creating indisputable guilt within her audience in order to convince them for the creation of child labor laws. She speaks to her audience of white men and women with a level of respect that shows she has faith in them to fix the errors of child labor. She employs diction early in her speech by establishing that “we” have a problem not just the audience. In doing so she enforces that the problem is not just there’s, nor hers, but everyone's. Affirming that the immoral abuses of child labor is a problem for everyone; additionally, a mistake that they now need to correct. For instance, she constructs herself within the issue by grouping herself with the audience: “ Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working... ” Thus by integrating herself within the whole she reveals that they all are guilty of doing so, and no one person is innocent. …show more content…
Throughout her speech she repetitively appeals to the mothers and fathers in the audience by specifying what kind of children are working “under the sweating system”- white little girls. Detailing the children as “just tall enough to reach the bobbins” she is expressing the urgent need of laws to improve these “little beasts of burdens” situation. Exploiting the parents natural need, an instinct, to protect their children, Kelley has effectively grasped their attention by depicting a day in the life of a working child making the audience think, “what if that was my
By enacting the use of such rhetorical devices the speaker is creating indisputable guilt within her audience in order to convince them for the creation of child labor laws. She speaks to her audience of white men and women with a level of respect that shows she has faith in them to fix the errors of child labor. She employs diction early in her speech by establishing that “we” have a problem not just the audience. In doing so she enforces that the problem is not just there’s, nor hers, but everyone's. Affirming that the immoral abuses of child labor is a problem for everyone; additionally, a mistake that they now need to correct. For instance, she constructs herself within the issue by grouping herself with the audience: “ Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working... ” Thus by integrating herself within the whole she reveals that they all are guilty of doing so, and no one person is innocent. …show more content…
Throughout her speech she repetitively appeals to the mothers and fathers in the audience by specifying what kind of children are working “under the sweating system”- white little girls. Detailing the children as “just tall enough to reach the bobbins” she is expressing the urgent need of laws to improve these “little beasts of burdens” situation. Exploiting the parents natural need, an instinct, to protect their children, Kelley has effectively grasped their attention by depicting a day in the life of a working child making the audience think, “what if that was my