In order get her point across that child labor is a cruel situation, throughout her speech, strong leader Florence Kelley uses repetition as well as emotional appeal about the topic to touch and affect her audience of woman suffragists. Florence Kelley supplies her speech with plenty of logical appeals by stating physical laws of the working children, but more importantly adds careful phrases that tug on the audience’s emotion, making them feel apologetic towards these innocent children. She explains that since these poor children have to work rigorous hours every single day, sorrowfully they are “robbed” from the school life just so they can earn little wage. The choice of the word “robbed” connotes that school is unfairly and aggressively taken away from them, something pure and necessary in childhood. The reality of the devastating fact emphasized by the solemn tone connects to the audience by making them feel somber and want to take action because they now understand that child labor is harsh and almost inhumane.
Towards the end of the speech Kelley brings an initiation, explaining what they can do as woman who cannot vote because as a matter of fact, they are not entirely powerless. She speaks to the listeners that we can do this, that we can “free the children” from the chains of long hours of work in the dangerous factories by enlisting the men. She uses epistrophe; she repeats the phrase a couple times, to engrave the phrase into the people’s minds so they can remember what they must do and also remember why she is making the speech. Because of the repetition she is able to grab the audience’s attention and let them know that it is their duty to “free” them, as it is an understanding that children should be free in the first place: especially from torturous unsafe long hours of factory working. Florence Kelley’s speech is so powerful because not only does she embed facts with shameful emotion to direct the audiences heart a certain way, but also uses repetition throughout to emphasize particular ideas, making the speech itself memorable.
