Florence Kelley -- A Woman of Fierce Fidelity "she was not afraid of truth, she was not afraid of life, she was not afraid of death, she was not afraid of enemies" (Lillian Wald at a memorial for Kelley).
But perhaps Florence Kelley’s greatest legacy is her example of unflaggling zeal and lifetime fidelity in the cause of justice for those oppressed by the worst excesses of early capitalism --especially women and children. In spite of personal tragedies, such as divorce and the death of her beloved daughter, in spite of numerous defeats, such as repeated Supreme Court declarations of unconstitutional rulings to many hard-won legislative reforms, in spite of public invective and libel, such as being labeled a Red because her former husband was a Russian, in spite of chronically tight finances, uncomfortable living conditions, and grueling, dangerous work, such as visiting cholera-infected sweatshops when no public officials would venture in, in spite of her naturally impatient temperament, Florence Kelley remained a faithful fighter for a just society until her death in 1932 at the age of 74. Florence Kelley’s Role in Child Labor Reform When Kelley herself was a child, her
progressive father took her on a midnight tour of the
factories where young boys Florence Kelley’s Role in Maternal and Child Health Services Another childhood memory quickened
Florence Kelley’s lifelong fight for government
funds for maternal and child health services. She never
forgot her own mother’s grief over the Florence Kelley’s Role in Improving Working Conditions for Women Personal experience fed Kelley’s zeal for social reform; but field studies of social conditions, and scientific mustering of data and evidence formed the solid foundation which supported the numerous successes she had in progressive reforms to industrial conditions in the early 20th century. Among her successes one of the most precedent-setting was the Supreme Court ruling on Muller v. Oregon, which established the legality of a 10-hour working day for women. In this case the Court determined that setting limits to working hours does not violate the U.S. Constitution. This was an important reversal of many previous discouraging cases in which the Supreme Court had declared many pieces of hard-won protective labor legislation unconstitutional. Subsequent to this case, state legislatures were able to forge ahead with a range of protective labor legislation. Florence Kelley and her good friend attorney Louis Brandeis (later himself to become a Supreme Court justice) made legal history in this case by their use of scientific, social data as a basis to argue the case before the Court. For several intense weeks before the hearing, Kelley and her assistants worked long hours to amass and present to the Court a wide range of evidence regarding the harmful effects of long working days (in many cases 12 to 14 hours) on women’s health.
Hazarous and venturesome are good adjectives to characterize the whole of Florence Kelley’s remarkable life and numerous accomplishments on behalf of children, and working women and men in America. In eulogy at her funeral, friends said everyone was brave from the moment she came into a room. Florence Kelley was a woman of fierce fidelity to justice who inspired others to also maintain their commitments.
|
mong the many famous
and powerful women whose names
are associated with
the Settlement House movement and the Progressive
movement of the early 20th Century, one of the most
remarkable was Florence Kelley. Yet, Kelley’s name
and her wide range of contributions to social reform and
social justice are not as frequently remembered as are
those of some her associates and fellow reformers, such
as Julia Lathrop or Lillian Wald. Kelley’s role in
the abolishment of child labor, the passage of protective
legislation for working women, the establishment of
minimum wage laws, and the development of maternal and
child health services qualify her for recognition as a A seminal force in American life. (Goldmark, 1953, p. 2). 
lorence Kelley’s
important contributions to social reform also include her
brilliant, pioneering skill in developing many new
methods or strategies to use in challenging the status
quo of social ills. Kelley developed such strategies as
consumer boycotts of sweatshop-produced clothing and the
use of clothing labels to guarantee legally-produced
goods, demonstrating the important role of the consumer
in the economic contract. She married science to moral
zeal by developing detailed, scientific studies of child
labor in factories, stockyards and sweatshops, and then
reporting her solid findings with fiery style and vivid
detail of the horrendous abuse of children. Her abilities
to describe the oppressive conditions of the working
classes were comparable to Charles Dickens. With Louis
Brandeis as attorney, and with the help of her younger
colleague, Josephine Goldmark, Kelley pioneered the use
of scientific data to influence the decision of the U.S.
Supreme Court, to set legal limits on hours of work for
women. Florence Kelley was one of the first reformers to
recognize that strategy for social change must address
the prevention of social ills and injustices, not just
their remediation or amelioration after the fact. She was
creative in her ability to envision concrete, specific
measures to respond to pervasive evils. For example, she
proposed and fought for legal requirements for states to
register births, and for employers (rather than
desperately poor parents) to document workers’ ages,
as steps toward ending exploitative child labor.
Enforcement of mandatory school attendance was also a
part of the strategy to end child labor. 
helped in the manufacture of steel and glass.
The dangerous and difficult conditions she witnessed
influenced her lifetime campaign against the exploitation
of children in factories and tenement sweatshops. When
Kelley went to live at Hull House in Chicago with Jane
Addams and other Settlement house pioneers (1891-1899),
her first field work was an intensive survey of the
square mile surrounding the settlement. She found
children as young as three working in tenement At homework (garment
manufacture in homes). As a result of her research and
other studies, Illinois State Legislature passed the
first factory law prohibiting employment of children
under age 14. Kelley was appointed by Illionois’
progressive Governor Altgeld to be the first woman
factory inspector, to monitor this law and other reform
legislation. In 1899 Florence Kelley moved to New York to
direct the newly-formed National Consumers League. Here,
she pioneerd the use of labels on clothing to certify
that garments had been produced without child labor and
within the parameters of other new legislation regulating
factory work.
death of five little daughters. Florence was
the only one to survive to adulthood. Lillian Wald, who
lived with Kelley at the Henry Street Settlement in New
York, conceived of the idea to establish a federal bureau
to study and work to improve the condition of children in
society. Florence Kelley and Edward T. Devine --editor of
the Survey Graphic -- worked tirelessly to enlist
national support for Wald’s proposal, which finally
resulted in establishment of the United States
Children’s Bureau in 1912. Julia Lathrop,
Kelley’s friend and colleague, became the
Bureau’s first director. Among her numerous
accomplishment in social reform, Florence Kelley herself
judged passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act as having the
most fundamental importance (Goldmark, 1953, p. 93). This
1921 legislation, administered by the Children’s
Bureau, was innovative in its establishment of
federal-state partnerships for research and services to
combat maternal and infant mortality. Mrs. Kelley’s
skills in combining passion with cold facts about social
evils are best illustrated by her testimony to Congress
about this legislation on December 20th, 1920, in which
she compared Congress’s indifference to the daily
deaths of 680 children --or 20,000 a month. (Goldmark, 1953, p. 107), to Herod’s
slaughter of the Innocents.