In the 21st hundred Americans bask a society where charwoman can vote and earn pay comparable to those earned by mankind , children ca n’t be forced to work and people ca n’t be purchase , sell or owned by another mortal . When you pause to consider this was n’t the compositor’s case for much of the country ’s history , it ’s pretty head bollix up .
Political activists made the Land of the Free much free than it was in the start , and name calling like Abraham Lincoln , Harriet TubmanandMother Jonescome to mind . One American societal reformer you might not have heard of is Florence Kelley , but she , along with her fathercongressman William Darrah Kelley , were some of the most influential and heaviest - hitting social crusaders of theProgressive Era .
The late 1800s and early 1900s was a time when social activism was blistering in America , as there werea lotof problems to rectify : political corruption , corporate monopoly , abysmal race relations , women ’s suffrage and inhumane working condition for adult and children . Florence Kelley was a sinewy and effective community personal organizer who work on issues ranging fromwomen ’s suffrageto childlabor , Social Security and the eight - hr working day . If you ’re grateful that U.S. police force ensures that its citizen have decent working condition and that children go to school instead of work in mines , you may add Kelley to your list of thank - you notes .
Who Was Florence Kelley?
Florence Kelley was assume in 1859 Philadelphia to a loaded Quaker household — her father , William Darrah " Pig Iron " Kelley , was a justice , a father of the Republican Party , longtime member of the House of Representatives , a staunchabolitionistand a protagonist of Abraham Lincoln . He was raise in poverty — his widowed mother ran a boarding firm in Philadelphia — and he was taken out of school and commit to work at a very young eld to help his family make close meet . His interest in child confinement issues stemmed from working retentive hours as a child — child laborers in those days pass their shifts chewing immature tea leaves to bide awake .
William ’s girl , on the other hired hand , was tolerate into wealth and perquisite , but that does n’t think of he spared her the gory details of his puerility drudgery . From her male parent , Florence — ring " Florie " by her family — learned about child project issues and charwoman ’s vote and the importance of emancipation and the abolition of slavery in the U.S. , as well as smuggled voting right . She watched as her beginner crop in his electrical capacity as a congressman to blackball thrall with the13th Amendmentand as he enter in writing the15th Amendment , which granted African American man the right to vote . During her childhood , he was physically attacked on several occasions — once he was stabbed in a fancy hotel by a fellow congressman who did n’t like his vocal anti - slavery stance . Another prison term , as he was giving a speech about Reconstruction in Mobile , Alabama , members of the Ku Klux Klan opened fervency at the stage , missing Kelley , but pop two and wounding slews of others .
Firenze loved her father ’s principles and fiery spirit , and in the thick of torturing family calamity — all five of her sisters expire before the eld of six — he educate her in his worldview . He began teach her about inhumane child labor practice session and , by the years of 7 , she had become an unsatiable cognoscente of history and statistic , had toured steel mills and glass factories and attended political rallies .
" Florence Kelley had everything exit for her , including an elite family setting deeply embedded in revolutionary social movements , " says Kathryn Kish Sklar , source of " Florence Kelley and the Nation ’s employment " and co - editor of " The Selected Letters of Florence Kelley , 1869 - 1932 . "
" Her Church Father ’s 30 age in the U.S. House of Representatives gave her an insider ’s understanding of how political structures worked . She caught the womanhood ’s movement uprise with its third contemporaries — women ’s movements had been cycling every 30 years since 1800 . She was a socialist , which give her a clean-cut agreement of the way exploitation worked with earnings - earner : They were paid less than the economic value they created , which enriched employers and impoverished earnings - earner . "
Kelley’s Formal Education and Real-life Experience
In 1882 , Florence was one of the first women to graduate from Cornell University , and during the early 1880s she often accompanied her father to Washington and help him write his speeches . She was turned down from Pennsylvania and Oxford University because of her gender , but she eventually received a law degree from Northwestern University and was admitted to the bar before 1900 — an almost unheard - of accomplishment .
As she mature sometime , her progressive political notion outstripped even her father ’s . In 1884 she moved to Europe to go to the University of Zurich and married a socialistic Polish - Russian medical student named Lazare Wischnewetzky and had three tyke . She write to beget about her newfound interest group in Marxism and the problem with the way elect officials manipulated American commonwealth to their own benefit . William and Florence quarrel but reconciled in his last day as he succumbed to cancer in 1890 .
After the death of her father , Kelley move back to the U.S. and obtained a extremely publicized and in public contested divorce from her abusive and scattergood husband . She received full detainment of her kid , moved to Chicago and exchange her last name back to " Kelley , " which she go along for the rest of her life story .
Kelley Takes Up Labor Reform
Kelley made a name for herself at the dawn of the Progressive Era . She dive brain - first into labor reform , take on it from all Angle . She traveled ceaselessly , speaking about working condition in American mill , and advertize to clear laws requiring inspections in factories using child workers , and restrict the figure of hr woman and children could work each day . As the head of the National Consumers League ( NCL ) , she organize the purchasing power of shopper to create incentives for industries to amend their trade union movement practices . She led Illinois legislators on tours of sweatshops and in 1893 pushed them to found the nation ’s first factory law which limit a working day for women to eight hours and disallow children under the age of 14 from working at all . This Illinois law is widely considered to strike out the showtime of the Progressive Era .
Kelley ’s efforts were n’t strictly specify to labor concerns . In 1909 she was a founding member of theNAACP , protested White - led race belly laugh and worked to pass anti - lynching and educational - par jurisprudence . She helped reduce infant deathrate across the nation by helping establish the United States Children ’s Bureau and working to pass theSheppard - Towner Actat the federal level . Without these two pieces of legislating , the U.S. Social Security Administration would not exist .
" Kelley ’s era , like ours , was full of battle and crisis , but she used hope as her primary leverage , " says Sklar .
