Florence Kelley

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Florence Kelley (1859–1932) was a committed socialist and political reformer who campaigned against child labour in the United States. In 1899 she became the leader of the National Consumers' League, an anti-sweatshop and pro-minimum wage pressure group which she supported until her death. This volume, first published in 1914, describes her views on the problems facing American society due to the expansion of industry. Kelley discusses the negative effects of rapid industrialisation on the American urban working class, in terms of the effects on the family, on the health of workers, on the education of the working class; and discusses the economic 'morality' of controlling the means of production. She also suggests possible legislation to mitigate these problems, some of which later passed into federal law. This volume provides a vivid description of the lives of America's urban working class and illustrates the extent of contemporary industrialisation in America.

As head of the National Consumers' League from its founding in 1899 until her death in 1932, Florence Kelley led campaigns that reshaped the conditions under which goods were produced in the United States. Her efforts produced the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, as well as laws providing for an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage. She mobilized women's organizations to support the passage of the first federal health legislation for women and children in 1921, and she headed the crusade against child labor between 1890 and 1930. An ally of W. E. B. Du Bois, she was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served on its board for twenty years. This volume collects nearly three hundred of Florence Kelley's letters, written over the course of more than six decades and embracing such topics as improved working conditions for women and children, intense engagement in electoral politics, struggles against manufacturing interests, and the machinations of a conservative Supreme Court. Rendered in Kelley's vivid, often combative prose, these letters also provide an intimate view into the personal life of a dedicated reformer who balanced her career with her responsibilities as a single mother of three children.