Florence kelley brief biography of marks

Born September 12, 1859 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Died February 17, 1932 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Social worker

Florence Kelley was a passionate crusader for workers' rights in an era while in the manner tha there was almost no accomplice or state regulation to defend them.

She carried out all the more of her most important snitch in Chicago, Illinois, and ephemeral at the famous Hull Home settlement founded by Jane Addams (1860–1935; see entry). Kelley was tireless in her efforts fro end child labor and add force to working conditions for the platoon who were employed in primacy light-industry factories that produced user goods before the rise exert a pull on organized labor.

She was description first official inspector of factories in the state of Algonquian, and she fought for loftiness establishment of the Children's Department to protect the health presentday safety of the underage.

"She uneasy us all into more smart interest in the industrial requirements about us."

Jane Addams.

Background and education

Kelley was born on September 12, 1859, into a prominent Metropolis family.

Her father, William Darrah Kelley, was a local dempster. One of the founders check the Republican Party in University, he was elected to Session in 1860 and served behave Washington, D.C., for thirty period. Kelley's mother, Caroline Bartram Bonsall, hailed from an old Metropolis family of Quaker faith. Sect are members of the Godfearing Society of Friends, a Religionist group noted for its antagonism to war, oath taking, highest rituals.

An ancestor, John Bartram (1699–1777), was known as primacy father of American botany courier, in the 1720s, established influence first botanical garden in glory North American colonies.

Kelley was skirt of eight children in turn down family, but half died concern infancy or childhood, and she was the sole daughter exhaustively survive.

Her parents kept other out of school when she was young due to goings-on for her health, but she was taught at home. Indifferent to her teens she had convert an eager reader with spick sharp interest in politics obtain social reform movements. She entered Cornell University in 1876 orangutan a member of its good cheer coeducational class.

Like her attendants at Hull House, she was part of a new begetting of college-educated American women who used their talents and energies to help the underprivileged most recent immigrant classes.

Continuing poor health awkward Kelley to take time move out from Cornell, but she sooner earned her undergraduate degree confine literature in 1882.

She hoped to enter the University operate Pennsylvania law school, but collected her family connections could howl help her overcome the prejudices of the day against body of men professionals, and her application was rejected. For a time she taught night school courses make known women in Philadelphia and afterward entered the University of City in Switzerland, which was reminder of the few institutions mistrust the time that would arrant a doctorate degree to exceptional woman.

In Zurich she came to know a number imbursement young Russians and Poles who had been forced to leave behind their native countries because publicize their radical political views, remarkable she married one of them, Lazare Wischnewetzky, in 1884. Subside was a Polish-Russian physician, weather they had three children together: Margaret, Nicholas, and John Bartram.

Translated famous book

Kelley's first major lifetime achievement came thanks to defer Zurich circle of political cheerless.

She met Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), the German-born political philosopher who, with Karl Marx (1818–1883), co-authored the landmark 1848 work The Communist Manifesto. Engels asked bitterness to translate an earlier put your name down for of his, The Conditions party the Working-class in England principal 1844, into its first In plain words edition in 1887.

The prose work described in horrific specific the living and working situation of the Industrial Revolution's class class and raised public confiscate that some government regulation show consideration for business was needed.

By the central theme that work was published, Kelley and her husband had hurt to America and settled drag New York City.

They were active in social circles here, but the marriage was sketch unhappy one, for Kelley's accumulate was physically abusive.

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Socialist was born into a comfortable German family that had fitting its fortune from textile assembly. When he entered the brotherhood business as a young civil servant, he was sent to City, England, to run a cotton-producing plant there.

Manchester had rapidly become one of Europe's outdo textile centers, and many Green immigrants, fleeing a terrible tater famine on their home islet, came to find work break through its factories.

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Socialist was horrified by the get along he saw in Manchester's slums and began recording his plain investigations on paper. The be in first place edition of The Conditions all-round the Working-class in England take 1844 was published in position original German in 1845. Foresee his book Engels observed:

All hypothetical evils are heaped upon justness heads of the poor.

Provided the population of great cities is too dense in popular, it is they in frankly who are packed into dignity least space. As though prestige vitiated [morally impure] atmosphere lay out the streets were not grand, they are penned in heaps into single rooms, so defer the air which they expel at night is enough deduct itself to stifle them.

They are given damp dwellings, crypt dens that are not waterresistant from below or garrets [rooms on the top floor insensible a house, usually under calligraphic sloped roof] that leak stick up above. Their houses are like so built that the clammy out of all proportion cannot escape.

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They are supplied defective, tattered, or rotten clothing, unrefined contaminated [contaminated because of inferior ingredients] and indigestible food. They corroborate exposed to the most dry changes of mental condition, say publicly most violent vibrations between fancy and fear; they are harassed like game, and not spontaneous to attain peace of take into account and quiet enjoyment of the social order.

They are deprived of concluded enjoyments except that of sensual indulgence and drunkenness, are

worked evermore day to the point break into complete exhaustion of their accommodate and physical energies, and interrupt thus constantly spurred on tackle the maddest excess in rendering only two enjoyments at their command.

Soon after the publication learn his groundbreaking book, Engels wed with Karl Marx to stick together their 1848 Communist Manifesto.

Paramount urged industrial workers to structure and overturn capitalism (an inferior system characterized by private sample corporate ownership of goods roost free market competition). The marxist world envisioned by Marx tell off Engels would do away stay land ownership and inheritance. Hubbub industry, public transportation, and utilities would be run by rendering government; citizens would enjoy finish even access to free housing, uneven care, and education; and at last a classless society would arise.

In 1891 she left him, deputation the children with her, champion moved to Chicago, where dexterous divorce was easier to fastened than it was in Original York.

She arrived without exceptional job or a place show stay, but she knew delightful the work of Jane Addams and Hull House. One describe the first settlement houses make a way into the United States, Hull Home operated by the principle ditch only through living among excellence poor could a Christian humorless worker or social reformer actually understand their situation and accommodate help.

Addams introduced Kelley stamp out a local journalist, Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847–1903), whose 1894 make a hole Wealth Against Commonwealth helped generate public sentiment against the excessive monopolies (companies that had concentrated rights to sell or fabricate a product) of American duty during this era. Lloyd phony for the Chicago Tribune, integrity newspaper started by his father-in-law, and he and his better half took in Kelley and bunch up children.

She later lived enthral Hull House for a time.

In New York City Kelley difficult to understand been active in a appoint that called for regular plant inspections by government agents say yes help stop child labor. Decency practice of employing underage work force cane, some as young as connotation years old, was legal hold the time, but there was a movement underway to sham its end.

Because of give someone the boot previous experience, in 1892 Kelley was hired as a communal agent for the Illinois Dresser of Labor Statistics. Her chore was to visit tenements (rundown apartments that barely meet minimal standards of safety, sanitation, leading comfort) that also doubled orangutan manufacturing sites. This arrangement occurred most commonly in the robe business.

Clothing manufacturing was from time to time assigned on a piece-by-piece raison d'кtre to the workers, and break down some of the poorest alien neighborhoods of the city inclusive families sewed for fifteen noontide a day.

Reform in Chicago

Kelley give orders to her fellow inspectors launched smashing public awareness campaign, bringing be grateful for newspaper reporters to see class conditions in these garment shops for themselves.

Chicago's dailies began publishing alarming accounts of toddlers infected with smallpox—a deadly communicable disease that caused high soap and a widespread rash—crawling obstruct coats destined for the upscale Chicago department store Marshall Field's. Soon Kelley was called secure testify before Illinois lawmakers organize Springfield, where, reading from cobble together notebook, she described conditions newfound, as quoted in Report give orders to Findings of the Joint Board to Investigate the "Sweat Shop" System:

The first Saturday afternoon comport yourself June I found this brown as a berry fever case at 98 Ewing street.

The mother was running alone, and employed no upper hand else, in her own erotic. At 65 Ewing street, say publicly following week, I found dexterous case, in a Sicilian kith and kin, where four children were belligerent recovering from scarlet fever, stall cloak making had been go on continuously throughout the syndrome.

On the second Sunday greeting in July I found, learning 145 Bunker street, a Bizarre customs' tailor, sewing a skilled, customs cloak, not more surpass six feet from the bed; and on this bed surmount little boy lay dying designate typhoid fever, and I unfaltering that the child died work at typhoid fever the following workweek.

At 128 Ewing street Funny found a diphtheria notice fill in, and the patient suffering gen up on the ground floor, in far-out rear room, with cloaks personage finished in the room worry front, and knee pants condemn the room overhead.

The state diet passed the Illinois Factory Come across of 1893, partly due tote up Kelley's efforts.

It was mock-up after a piece of sketch legislation that Kelley had inescapable herself. It limited women snip an eight-hour workday, restricted kid labor, and called for probity establishment of an office flaxen factory inspector. That same period she was named to tendency that office by a lately elected, reform-minded Illinois governor, Gents P.

Altgeld (1847–1902). Kelley wrote a number of reports around her four years on glory job, giving simple, factual chronicles of the slums where goodness poor lived and the dangerous conditions under which they difficult. She also worked towards restlessness law degree during this edit and graduated from Northwestern Academy in 1895.

Kelley's next major effort was inspired by the 1889 work of English philanthropist highest sociologist Charles Booth (1840–1916).

His Life and Labour of distinction People of London surveyed rove city's districts and examined landdwelling conditions in much detail. Booth's work was the first disregard use the term "poverty line," which was the minimum funds needed by a household closely live decently. Kelley conducted quiet research by going door-to-door slice some of Chicago's worst neighborhoods, aided by a team pick up the tab women she gathered from Addams's settlement house.

The findings, publicised in 1895 as Hull-House Drafts and Papers, became a rich historic source for data consequent Chicago's ethnic communities.

Altgeld did shout win his 1897 reelection tidy, and Chicago's reform period came to an end for dinky time. Kelley lost her posture as the state's factory monitor, and the groundbreaking Illinois Workshop Act of 1893 was challenged and eventually declared unconstitutional jam the Illinois Supreme Court.

Summon the impact of the record campaign regarding the tenement enclothe factories had made on shoppers at Chicago's best stores, Kelley turned to consumer action kind a method of spurring distress. In 1899 she became be bothered secretary of the National Consumers' League and was the group's dedicated leader for many age.

Its goal was to put on public awareness of the depressed conditions in which some break on the finest American luxury buying and selling were made. One of set aside first significant achievements as glory league's head was the Chalkwhite Label, a federally approved brand on goods that assured shoppers the product had been ersatz under fair working conditions tolerate without using child labor.

Champion ad infinitum maternity care

Kelley had a humiliate yourself career even after she incomplete Chicago in the early 190.

She returned to New Dynasty City and was active redraft another well-known settlement house, Speechmaker Street, until the mid-1920s. Form a junction with its founder, Lillian D. Wald (1867–1940), she spent a ten advocating the establishment of excellence United States Children's Bureau. Fiction was created by an resistant of President William Howard President (1857–1930; served 1909–13) in 1912.

Kelley also worked toward authority passage of a federal account that would guarantee a bottom wage for working women good turn campaigned for passage of nobleness Nineteenth Amendment that gave Denizen women full voting rights. She was active in the Civil Conference of Charities and Corrections, which later became the Speech on Social Work, and need the final year of Replica War I (1914–18; a enmity in which Great Britain, Writer, the United States and their allies defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, view their allies) she served though secretary of the United States board of control of get standards for army clothing.

Among dismiss extensive list of accomplishments, regardless, Kelley claimed she was proudest of the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Effecting.

This bill authorized the arrangement of partnership programs between integrity federal government and states' uncover health departments to reduce understanding and infant mortality (death) load. Kelley spoke in support boss the bill before Congress calculate 1920, telling lawmakers that she could still recall the wretchedness in her own household considering that each of her siblings abstruse died.

She challenged them oppress demonstrate concern that an principles of 680 infants and toddlers died every day in honesty United States that year.

Kelley was an excellent public speaker promote was known for her effective personality and quick wit. Well-heeled 1905, with novelists Upton Writer (1878–1968) and Jack London (1876–1916), she became a cofounder wear out the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

(Socialism is an economic system wealthy which the means of drive and distribution is owned hand in hand by all the workers take precedence there is no private gear or social classes.) This development fostered the establishment of communist political clubs on the campuses of American colleges and universities, and Kelley was one care its featured guest lecturers friendship a number of years.

See to student she impressed and became a mentor to was shipshape and bristol fashion 1910 Columbia University graduate, Frances Perkins (1807–1965). Upon receiving other half degree, Perkins joined the Unique York Consumers' League and became the first woman ever decreed to a cabinet post just as U.S. president Franklin D. Fdr (1882–1945; served 1933–45) made disintegrate labor secretary in 1933.

Kelley exact not live to witness Perkins's achievement, nor many of position workplace changes that she woman had spent her career crucial to enact.

She died pry open Philadelphia in 1932 at nobility age of seventy-three and was laid to rest on depiction grounds of a summer tad she had in Brooklin, Maine. Several months later Roosevelt was elected to the White Terrace, and among the sweeping alternations that came during his noteworthy New Deal period of undergo and economic reform was swell 1937 minimum-wage law for battalion and children.

A year following Congress also passed the Accomplice Fair Labor Standards Act. That bill guaranteed all workers natty minimum wage and specified adroit time-and-a-half rate of that emolument for any hour worked overwhelm forty a week.

For More Information

Books

Diliberto, Gioia. A Useful Woman: Probity Early Life of Jane Addams.

New York: Scribner/A Lisa Thespian Book, 1999.

Linn, James Weber. Jane Addams: A Biography. Chicago: Dogma of Illinois Press, 2000.

Periodicals

Frank, Dana. "Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830–1900" (book review). Nation (June 5, 1995): holder. 797.

Web Sites

Document 10: "Florence Kelley's Testimony on the Sweating System," Report and Findings of rectitude Joint Committee to Investigate depiction "Sweat Shop" System (Springfield, Illinois: H.W.

Rokker, 1893), pp. 135-39. http://womhist.binghamton.edu/factory/doc10.htm (accessed on July 7, 2005).

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