Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley, a social worker and activist, found an unusual audience for her speech on child labor reforms. After all, the primary goal of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was to extend the right to vote to American women, not to reform factories. Yet, Kelley effectively persuaded the convention that both males and females should politically participate to the fullest extent of their ability to free the children from harsh factory work. Kelley appealed to her audience both logically and emotionally, using not only mathematical census data, but heart-wrenching imagery. She also made the issue of child labor relevant to an audience primarily concerned with women’s suffrage by relating her topic to issues the convention actively supported.
Referencing frightening statistics and inadequate labor laws, Florence Kelley immediately conveyed the severity of factory children's situations. Kelley's use of census data illustrated the rapidly increasing magnitude of children in the workforce, asserting that child labor was all too common. Likewise, her examples of states with few or …show more content…
Although most agreed that child labor was an important issue at the time, it was not one that suffragettes prioritized. In spite of this, Kelley connected with this audience by relating her thesis to the suffragettes' values and priorities. By mainly focusing on girls in factories, Kelley automatically made her speech relevant to a female audience, especially one immersed in expanding women’s rights. Through her rhetorical questions, Kelley also implied that women’s suffrage could make a significant difference in child labor laws. Doing so, she not only aligned her goal with the convention’s, but openly showed her support for women’s suffrage. These rhetorical devices served to build rapport between Kelley and her audience, making the suffragettes more likely to support her strides toward child labor