Puzzling Speeches

Florence Kelley's speech is powerful and moving, forcing the audience to take action on the issue of women suffrage. She uses rhetoric throughout the speech to gain the empathy from the women audience. Kelley presents many facts with examples to gain logos and pathos at the same time and to clarify the enormity of the issue. This allows her to cause feelings of guilt in the listeners as their own race of children, "little white girls," are permitted to work throughout the night while instead they should be at home hugging their pink elephant stuffed animals while falling asleep. By listing all the luxury items the little girls labor over, for the grown men, Kelley causes the feelings of shame to grow: "Children braid straw for our hats, they spin and weave the silk and velvet wherewith we trim our hats." These revelations are impactful as it makes the audience realize it is their fault their children work such long hours. It is because the audience has not searched for their own voice. Florence then asserts that there is a solution to this problem. The families of the less fortunate were praying to Jesus for the hope of relieving their children of such burdens; however, Jesus is not the only one who can help the little girls as Kelley persuades, the listeners can also make a difference by promoting women suffrage. Florence hopes to further her cause to not only help those "little beasts of burden" but also to fix any other issues that the male audience might have missed. She uses rhetorical questions like, "If the mothers and the teachers in Georgia could vote...," to demonstrate that men are sometimes blind to issues that women could easily fix. Once upon a time, woman and man were separated by power of suffrage, but today everyone is working together to make this world a better place because of speakers like Florence Kelley.

What the little girls should be doing.