Speech On Child Labor

Since capitalism has existed, children have been able to work. These children have worked in the harshest conditions and the longest hours. With thousands of children working in the United States, social worker Florence Kelley decided something needed to be done about it. So on July 22, 1905, she delivered a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), analyzing, and explaining the problems with children in the workplace. She uses the rhetorical strategy, cause and effect, to exemplify the pros and cons of child labor at the time. Kelley later explains how her thoughts can reflect on the future of child labor in the United States.

“ In 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16.”(Foner) Child labor is a terrible thing that children have to go through. Although this was not considered a problem because of how normal it was.(Foner.). But due to the work of investigative journalist children today no longer have to worry about working in these dangerous environments.

But we should not buy products made with child labor because if the employers overseas see that no products made by them is being bought and the reason why is because the children are not getting paid enough they could raise the pay to at least 3 dollars a day instead of 1 dollar a day so that the family can actually have enough money to live. If the employers are making a lot more money than the children then it wouldn't hurt then to raise their pay a dollar or

The nineteen hundreds: children were working through the night while the adults were sleeping. Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer, spoke out against this harsh reality. Fighting to improve child labor laws, she delivered her speech in 1905 at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, in Philadelphia. By incorporating anecdotes to emotionally appeal; shocking state statistics; and showing a strong, direct, and compassionate attitude towards children working, Florence Kelley reveals the harsh child labor laws and fights to improve their conditions.

Florence Kelley, social worker and reformer, argued for child labor laws in a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia in 1905. To achieve her purpose, Kelley prods her audience of both men and women to fight for the right for women to vote in order to free the children from slavery.

The laborers in the mines are being completely victimized in order to make money, clearly demonstrated by Disraeli’s words. Child labor abuse was not exclusive to coal mines however.

In one article called, “No Rest for the Weary: Children in the Coal Mines,” it talks about how dangerous the job is and how long they had to work. The job ranged from 8-10 hours, in very harsh conditions. As one guy says, “I couldn’t do work a ten year old boy done everyday for ten hours.” This shows how harsh and the conditions that the kids were in.

To continue, children are forced to work in dangerous conditions. Many children do not wear shoes and work with dangerous equipment that could kill them. The children should not be put in the position where they do not know better than to reach over something, but this could be a life-altering decision. Their clothes could get caught

Child labour is the employment of children as money earners. It became a serious social problem in the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the 1700's, and the problem spread to other countries as they became industrialized. The problem arose when children, many below the age of 10, were employed by factories and mines. The youths were forced to work long hours under dangerous and unhealthy conditions, and their wages were very small. Child workers were often deprived of the chance to attend school. Uneducated, the only work they were capable of doing was unskilled labor. Thus, they had little chance to improve themselves.

Florence Kelley, in her 1905 speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, condemns that “while we sleep,” labor practices in the United States force young children into cruel, inhumane working conditions. Kelley illuminates the harsh reality of child labor by utilizing shocking statistics, creating forceful emotional appeals to detail a bleak visual of the grueling working conditions, and juxtaposing both the way girls spend their time and the current laws between states. Kelley’s purpose is to inspire women to fight for the right to vote, believing that enfranchisement will lead to improvements in society, including the reformation of child labor practices. Kelley’s ostensible audience is the voting class of America because she closes her speech by offering to “enlist the workingmen voters” to join the fight against child labor in an enraged and persuasive tone.

Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5

Of the latter, 126 million were engaged in hazardous work. The corresponding figures for the narrower age group of five to fourteen-year-olds are 191 million economically active children, 166 million child laborers, and 74 million children in hazardous work. The decline was much greater for those engaged in hazardous work: by twenty-six percent for the 5-17 age group and thirty-three percent for five to fourteen-year-olds. (UN Child Labor)

In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.

First of all, children that are working in these gold mines are being forced to submerge deep into gold mines and submit themselves to an almost imminent death. According to Mr. Larry C. Price, there are children who labor endlessly for “as little as $2 a day” (One

Child labor is work for children, but also harmful to their growth physically, mentally or emotionally. Children were forced to work because of their family’s extremely poor condition where they may be needed to drop out of school. In most kinds of