Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley's Life StoryFlorence Kelley (1859-1932) fought to implement child labor laws, minimum wages, maximum working hours, industrial health control, prenatal care to lower maternal and infant mortality. She was among the late 19th and early 20th centuries militant women, including Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald and others, who have come to be called social reformers. Her close friend and fellow worker, Josephine Goldmark (1877-1950), tells a sympathetic yet richly detailed story of Florence Kelley’s energetic life and accomplishments. At the turn of the 20th century and afterward, the 12-hour workday and the 7-day workweek prevailed in many industries. The sweatshop was commonplace. In most states women and young girls worked long hours unregulated by law. Child labor, beginning at age 10 or 12, was the normal pattern for the poor. That such social evils have largely disappeared is due in large part to the insistent and impatient crusading of Florence Kelley as Chief Inspector of Factories for Illinois; at Hull House in Chicago and the Henry Street Settlement in New York; as General Secretary of the National Consumers League; to establish the U.S. Children’s Bureau; in the National Woman Suffrage Association, the National Child Labor Committee and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Florence nce Kelley worked with the law, especially with Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, spent herself tirelessly in research to document the legal basis for shorter working hours for women, an investigation now famous as the “Brandeis Brief.” Indignant and eloquent, she stimulated the investigation of the use of radium in luminous paint, to end deaths from poisoning of dial painters in watch factories. |
Contents
Home and Heritage | 1 |
Mrs Kelley Enforces the New Law | 36 |
5 | 41 |
Copyright | |
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action Alice Hamilton amendment American appointed bill Brandeis Brandeis Brief brief CALIFORNIA/SANTA CRUZ UNIVERSITY Chicago chil Child Labor Committee child labor law Children's Bureau Commission conference Congress CRUZ The University decision disease dren early eight-hour employed employment enforcement evils facts father federal Florence Kelley Florence's friends girls homework hour law Hull House Illinois industrial infant and maternity investigation Jane Addams Jersey Julia Lathrop Kelley's knew label later law for women Legislature Lillian Wald living manufacturing Massachusetts meeting ment minimum wage minimum wage laws National Child Labor National Consumers League Newton Baker Oregon organization Paul Kellogg prohibiting Public Health radium radium poisoning secretary social statute suffrage sumers League Survey Graphic sweatshops tenement tion U. S. Supreme Court United University Library UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/SANTA woman Woman's Party workers wrote young