On July 22, 1905, Florence Kelley gave a speech. Read this passage adapted from her speech. Then answer the questions.
A Speech by Florence Kelley
1. We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years
who are earning their bread. They vary in age. They are six and seven years
in the cotton mills of Georgia. They are eight, nine, and ten years in the coal
mines of Pennsylvania. They are fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years in more
enlightened states. . . .
2. Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile
mills, all the night through. They will work in the deafening noise of the spindles
and the looms. They will spin and weave cotton and wool, silks, and ribbons for
3. In Georgia there is no restriction whatever! A girl of six or seven years, just
tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night.
And they will do so tonight, while we sleep.
4. Nor is it only in the South that these things occur. Alabama does better than
New Jersey. For Alabama limits the children’s work at night to eight hours. New
Jersey permits it all night long.
5. Last year New Jersey took a long backward step. A good law was repealed.
It had required women and children to stop work at six in the evening and at
noon on Friday. But now, in New Jersey, boys and girls after their fourteenth
birthday enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.
6. In Pennsylvania, until last May it was lawful for children thirteen years of age
to work twelve hours at night. . . .
7. The children make our shoes in the shoe factories. They knit our stockings,
our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton
underwear in the cotton mills. Children braid straw for our hats. They spin and
weave the silk and velvet we trim our hats with. They stamp buckles and metal
ornaments of all kinds, as well as pins and hat pins. . . .
8. We do not wish this. We prefer to have our work done by men and women.
But we are almost powerless. Not wholly powerless, however, are citizens who
enjoy the right of petition. For myself, I shall use this power in every possible
way until the right to the ballot is granted. And then I shall continue to
9. What can we do to free our consciences? There is one line of action by which
we can do much. We can enlist the workingmen on behalf of our cause just as
we strive with them to free the children. No labor organization in this country
ever fails to respond to an appeal for help in the freeing of the children.
10. For the sake of the children . . . we should enlist the workingmen voters,
with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil!
1. Women did not have the right to vote until 1920.