Rhetorical Analysis Of Child Labor

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women and children alike fought for equal rights and pay. Both groups, ironically, worked in the most horrific, unimaginable working conditions known to man. Women like Florence Kelley, would not stand for the horrendous conditions society placed in front of them. However, the fight against detrimental working conditions was a difficult battle to overcome. Kelly's campaign speech united women to fight for themselves and children when battling for better working conditions. Kelly's speech at the Convention of the National Woman's Suffrage Association utilizes emotional peeled her examples in order to make a strong dramatic emphasis on the point, appeals to the sentiment of her listeners, and …show more content…
For example, Kelly describes ,”the children making our shoes in the factory, they knit our stockings… they carry bundles of garments from the factory to the tenements, little beast of burden.” By outlining the multiple chores to children called upon to do, Kelly endangered an emotional in her listeners. Kelley’s successful use of syntax and parallelism highlight the plight of the child laborers. Kelly keeps utilizing an emotional appeal to her audience as she details how the unethical system of child labor stems from the bottoms to the top of the political spectrum. By presenting the fact that, “ two million children under the age of 16 years are earning their bread,” Kelley details the endless duties of a child laborer. Kelly appeals to the ethics of child labor by setting up examples of what children and women have to go through everyday. Her detailed examples begg her listeners to question whether or not child labor is worth the expenses of wool and cotton. As the audience questions the morality of their decisions, Kelly’s didactic diction endangers an emotional and personal cry against the horrors of child labor- Kelley’s intended