Today, most children get to enjoy their
childhood by playing with their friends with toys spanning from iPads to pink
elephants; however, once upon a time, this wasn't the case. As
industrialization began to rapidly grow in America, companies would often hire
children to slave over labor and machines for long hours with poor pay. These
deprived kids never got the chance to enjoy their younger days, because instead
of having fun they were miserable: they were forced to work 70 hour weeks in
horrendous conditions. Millions of children would desperately pray to
Jesus every night to let them get through one more toiling, dreadful day.
As Florence Kelley says in her speech to the National American Woman
Suffrage Association, they "will be working in textile mills, all the
night through, in the deafening noise of spindles". Kelley
skillfully and cleverly utilizes rhetoric to persuade the audience to stop
child labor by appealing to them logically and emotionally. She states
revolting facts and also makes everyone feel guilty for their recklessness by
describing how these "little beasts of burden" are going through so
much suffering to simply make goods that everyone else can enjoy. Luckily,
child labor laws are now in effect to protect kids from ever experiencing those
grueling days again.
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