Document Analysis Florence Kelly the Family and Womens Wage
Kelley, Florence
Florence Kelley (1859 – 1932): Social Reformer, Child Welfare Advocate, Socialist and Pacifist
Photo: Library of Congress
Digital ID: mnwp.153003
Introduction: Florence Kelley was a social reformer and political activist who defended the rights of working women and children. She served every bit the start general secretary of the National Consumers League and helped class the National Association for the Advocacy of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
Kelley was built-in on September 12, 1859 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of U.Southward. congressman William Darrah Kelley (1814-1890). Her father was an abolitionist of strict principles. He taught his daughter about kid workers, and several times took her to come across immature children working in steel and glass factories under dangerous weather. These visits would influence Kelley in her determination to plow toward advocacy for child labor reform.
In 1876, at the age of sixteen, Kelley enrolled at Cornell University. Due to illness that forced her to leave higher for over 2 years, she did not graduate until 1882. Later on i yr spent in teaching evening classes in Philadelphia, Kelley went to Europe to continue with her studies. At the University of Zürich she came under the influence of European socialism, particularly the works of Karl Marx. In 1887 she published a translation of Friedrich Engels'southward The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
Kelley married in 1884 to a Russian medical student, Lazare Wischnewetzky, and moved with him to New York City two years afterwards. The couple separated in 1889 and Kelley moved to Chicago with her three children. After obtaining a divorce, she reverted to her maiden proper name.
Social Welfare Career: In 1891 Kelley joined Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Ellen Gates Starr, and other women at Hull House. Kelley's first job after coming to the Hull House settlement was to visit the expanse effectually the settlement, surveying the working weather in local factories. She found children as young as 3 or four working in tenement sweatshops. The written report of this survey, forth with other following studies, was presented to the country, resulting in the Illinois State Legislature bringing nearly the start factory police prohibiting employment of children nether historic period xiv. Based on that success, Kelley was appointed to serve equally Illinois's first main factory inspector. Kelley was subsequently appointed the first woman manufactory inspector, with the task of monitoring the application of this law. To advance her credibility every bit an inspector, Kelley enrolled to written report constabulary at Northwestern University, graduating in 1894, and was successfully admitted to the bar.
In 1899 Kelley moved to Lillian Wald'due south Henry Street Settlement in New York Metropolis and became general secretary of the National Consumers League (NCL). The league was started by Jane Addams and Josephine Shaw Lowell every bit the Consumers' League of New York and had the objective of encouraging consumers to buy products simply from companies that met the NCL's standards of minimum wage and working conditions. Kelley traveled around the state giving lectures and raising awareness of working conditions in the Us. I important initiative of the NCL was the introduction of the White Label. Employers who met the standard of the NCL by utilizing the labor law and keeping the safe standards had the correct to brandish the White Label. The NCL members urged customers to boycott those products that did non take a white characterization.
Kelley led campaigns that reshaped the weather condition under which goods were produced in the United states of america. Among her accomplishments were the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and laws regulating hours and establishing minimum wages. In 1905 Kelley, together with Upton Sinclair and Jack London, started the Intercollegiate Socialist Social club. She gave a serial of public lectures in numerous American universities on improving the conditions of labor. During i of these lectures she met Frances Perkins, who became Kelley'southward friend and an important asset in the fight for her cause. Perkins became America'due south start adult female cabinet minister, and contributed toward passing the law in 1938 that effectively banned child labor for skilful. She also helped organize the New York Child Labor Committee in 1902 and was a founder of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904.
In 1909 Kelley helped with the organization of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and thereafter became a friend and marry of Due west.East.B. Du Bois. Kelley possessed enormous energy and ability to describe the oppressive conditions of the working classes. She was specially zealous in her efforts to meliorate working weather for women. However, she met numerous obstacles, including decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that legislative reforms brought on the state level were unconstitutional. Even so, Kelley persisted. She helped Josephine Clara Goldmark, director of research at the NCL, to gear up the "Brandeis Cursory" for the Muller v. Oregon example, argued past Louis D. Brandeis. Through the use of statistics from medical and sociological journals the case was able to bear witness that long working days (often 12 to 14 hours) had a devastating outcome on women's health. In its decision, the Supreme Court declared the legality of Oregon'due south ten-hour work solar day for women. This was an important victory not but in regulating women'south work, but besides in the greater boxing for improving general conditions of work in America. In the year following Muller v. Oregon,the NCL launched a minimum wage campaign that would pb to the passage of laws in fourteen states.
Kelley lobbied Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Kid Labor Act of 1916, which banned the auction of products created from factories that employed children aged 13 and nether. In 1919 Kelley was a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and for several years she served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Clan.
Florence Kelley died in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on Feb 17, 1932. She is buried at Philadelphia'due south Laurel Colina Cemetery.
For further reading and enquiry:
Bobick, Ruth (2015). Vi Remarkable Hull-Business firm Women. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Peter E. Randall.
Goldmark, Josephine (1953). Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley'south Life Story.Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kelley, Florence (2009).The Selected Letters of Florence Kelley, 1869 – 1931. Edited past K. Sklar and B.W. Palmer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
National Consumers League. Florence Kelley: Impatient Crusader. (Video)
National Consumers League website.
Sklar, Kathryn Kish (1995).Florence Kelley and the Nation'southward Work.New Haven: Yale University Press.
Trattner, Walter I. (1970).Cause for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Kid Labor Reform in America. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
How to Cite this Article (APA Format):"Florence Kelley" (2008, April three). Florence Kelley (1859-1932): Social reformer, child welfare abet, socialist and pacifist.Social Welfare History Project. Retrieved [date accessed] from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/people/kelley-florence/
Resources related to this topic may be found in the Social Welfare History Epitome Portal.
Source: https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/people/kelley-florence/
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