Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer, in her speech demonizes child labor and criticizes how the people turn a blind eye towards it. Kelley's purpose is to persuade and inform the people at the convention of the national American women suffrage association in Philadelphia about child labor and create change. She emphasizes the guilt each one of us bears in order to portray a sense of urgency on the importance of child labor laws
Kelly starts off with the use of repetition of phrases, which in turn helped her emphasize her point of how rapidly the child working force has increased. By saying, “Men increase, women increase, youth increase, boys increase in ranks of bread winners.”, she places the children in the same position as the parents when it comes to working and by ensuring a sense of equality for both sides it creates a feeling of uneasiness in regards to how unnatural it really is. And with that, it also helps set the tone for the rest of her speech.
She also uses repetition of certain words to convey her message. "These children make our shoes, they knit our stockings, our cotton underwear…","we do not wish this; we prefer, we are almost powerless […]" by repeating "our and "we" it further helps her emphasize her message. By doing so, this helps unify the audience as a whole and makes them feel as if they're just going along with it, almost making the audience feel guilty. But, by saying "we" it, helps her to encourage everybody that they are in it together and almost powerless but in order for the situation to truly progress they must change especially in regards to how much presence they have in government.
Kelly use of emotional appeal helped to capture her audience by encouraging a feeling of guilty over a sleep deprived and over-worked child. One such example, "Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise […]." And with that, she...