Florence Kelly's Suffrage Exposed In 'While We Sleep'

For the longest time, women’s role in society was very narrow and set in stone. Women weren’t given the chance to decide life for their own, and there was a very sharp distinction of gender roles. Women were viewed as inferior, weak, and dependant. They were expected to be responsible for the family and maintainance of the house. But as the 19th century began, so did a drastic change in society. Women started voicing their opinions and seeking change. Trying to break away from this ideology called “cult of domesticity” was a lengthy, burdensome, and demanding struggle.

But, before she brings this up, she first convinces her audience just how excruciatingly terrible child labor is. Kelley focuses on children working long hours through the night, saying, “tonight while we sleep…working all night long.” She then goes on to repeat the phrases, “while we sleep,” and, “all night long,” various times throughout the core of her speech. The emphasis on children working through the night appeals to the audience’s pathos; it includes the listeners in the force enslaving children, making them accountable. While the audience sleeps in the comfort of their homes, young girls spend all night working to make products for them to enjoy. The sorrowful repetition gains the listener’s sympathy for the speaker’s cause. Lastly, Florence Kelley demonstrates ironic diction in her attempt to persuade her spectators to ally with her campaign. The speaker says, “boys and girls…enjoy the pitiful privilege,” to describe young children going off to their jobs instead of to their playdates. The use of the contradictory phrase “pitiful privilege,” reminds the audience that the privilege of having a job, earning a living, becomes a burden when forced on these young

In 1905, in the United States, some children as young as six years old are working in factories and women aren’t allowed to vote. Florence Kelley is a fiery and inspiring child labor activist and also a suffragette. On July 22, 1905, in Philadelphia, she gives a speech to the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to try to rally them to assist her in her main cause which is fixing the child labor system. In her speech where she doesn’t hold back, Kelley lets the audience know why the child labor system is atrocious and why they should get involved. She also tells them the steps that they should take to try to right these wrongs, in convincing their husbands to vote for child labor

Guilt and lack of empowerment can cause people to stand up for what they believe in. Florence Kelley, a successful social worker delivered a speech in 1905 for the National American Woman Suffrage Association at Philadelphia. Passionately and pointedly, Kelley persuades her audience that if women were allowed to vote, then child labor laws could be fixed.

Generations of women fought courageously for equality for decades. The ratification of the Nineteenth amendment was vindication for so many women across the country. After having spent so many years oppressed and unable to make way for themselves, women everywhere were growing tired of being unable to own property, keep their wages and the independence that an academic education gave them. The decades that ensued brought with them various female activists, men that supported them and a division of its own within the movement. The women’s suffrage movement lasted 71 years and cam with great discourse to the lives of many women who fought for the cause.

Women’s rights is apparent in the fight for suffrage in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s . It can

Florence Kelley is a social worker and reformer who fights for child labor laws and better working conditions for women. At the National Assembly Women Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, Kelley recites a speech about the issue of child labor laws. She uses rhetorical strategies such as repetition of the many negative aspects of child labor through specific examples, criticism of state policies, and emotional appeal. A combination of figures, logic, evidence, and emotional appeal will help convince her audience that child labor is a problem.

Florence Kelley, an active social worker and reformer of the 20th century, rants over the horrendous working conditions kids must endure. She presents this in her speech before National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, which provides context and credibility for her argument. Kelley argues clearly of the terrible conditions and work hours kids suffer to bring about her message of, “enlisting the workingmen voters.” This is essentially to free the kids from the disastrous issue through her usage of credibility, empathetic tone to strike the audience, and her usage of examples of their conditions and state rules to support her message and purpose.

The battle for suffrage was a long and slow process. Many women tried to initiate the fight for suffrage, like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. “These were the New Suffragists: women who were better educated, more career-oriented, younger, less apt to be married and more cosmopolitan than their previous generation.” (pg 17) Eventually, in 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified; allowing women to vote, but it was not any one person or event that achieved this great feat. It was the confluence of certain necessary factors, the picketing and parades led by Alice Paul, militaristic suffrage parties and the influence of the media that caused the suffrage amendment to be passed and ratified in 1920. But most importantly, they successfully moved both

Florence Kelley was a United States social worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women. Throughout her speech to the Philadelphia Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she stresses the importance of changing the working conditions that are in place for children. By using child labor as her baseline, Kelley is able to talk about her main point, which is her suggestion for women’s rights with the help of repetition, strong word choice, and opposition.

There are many ways that Florence Kelley uses rhetorical devices to convey her message about child labor to her audience. One way that she does this is through appealing to the audience’s emotion. Kelly states that”... while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills those states, working eleven hours at night”(Kelly). This appeals to emotion because the thought of a little girl working in a dangerous mill, while others are sleep is sad and depressing. Another reason that this is part of the text appeals to emotion during this time frame she gave the speech is because the thought of a little “white girl” working in the Mills was more important and more appealing than a little black girl

In 1848, the women's suffrage movement began in Seneca Falls, New York; for the next 50 years women protested and educated American citizens on the validity of their movement. Florence Kelley, a social worker and reformer, advocated for women's suffrage as well as the end of child labour. At the convention of National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, Kelley spoke to the educated women who sought the right to vote. She wanted to achieve women's suffrage to enable women to end the use of child labour. Kelley depicts working children as defenseless as well as wealthy women as powerful in order to encourage the achievement of women’s suffrage and the abolishment child labor.

Many activists took action to fight against oppression to gain the right to vote and to gain respect from the people around them. Jane Addams was a great supporter of the Women’s Suffrage movement, performing speeches and even wrote a book, defending her argument for the topic. She wrote multiple books all through her life but, her book about Women’s Suffrage, Why Women Should Vote, was about how women should expand their responsibilities past their household and further to affecting the political world. This book was trying to convey that as times were changing women had to continue to change and spread their duty as women out to public services. She felt it their responsibility to continue to care for and look after their families to their full extent, meaning for them to take part in social reform around their neighborhoods or to fight to vote so they could influence the decisions that would make life better for following generations.

I was given the opportunity to watch the movie Suffragette. The movie illustrated the struggle women endured while pursuing the right to vote. Lives of actual women who participated during the movement were illustrated in the film along with fictional characters. I used the full names of real life characters, and just the first name of fictional characters in this essay.

Under women’s rights is, naturally, women’s suffrage (Rawls). The Socialist Party supported women’s suffrage because they believed that a woman’s vote was a step closer to a more egalitarian and socialist utopian society. Helen Valeska Bary, an administrator for the Los Angeles Political Equality League, said, in an interview with American history author Jacqueline K. Parker, that “every place where we had worked and sent literature and all that, we lost. We won in the places that we had neglected” (Bary). These places were rural areas, known as “cow counties.” They had not heard of the campaign for women’s suffrage until it had been reported in the newspapers that the referendum had failed. These voters then went to the voting boxes and voted for Amendment 8 (Bary). CONCLUSION