Florence Molthrop Kelley (September 12, 1859 – February 17, 1932) was an American social and political reformer who coined the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays,Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Florence Kelley," Women Building Chicago, 1790–1990: A Biographical Dictionary, Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast, eds., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2001, p. 463 and children's rightsMargolin, C.R. (1978) "Salvation versus Liberation: The Movement for Children's Rights in a Historical Context," Social Problems. 254. (April), pp. 441-452 is widely regarded today.
From its founding in 1899, Kelley served as the first general secretary of the National Consumers League. In 1909, Kelley helped to create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Early life On September 12, 1859, Kelley was born to William D. Kelley (1814–1890) and Caroline Bartram Bonsall in Philadelphia. Her father was an abolitionist, a founder of the Republican Party, a judge, and a longtime member of the US House of Representatives. He had the nickname "Pig Iron," due to his support for high duties on iron and steel.
Kelley was influenced mainly by her father and said, "I owe him everything that I have ever been able to learn to do." Throughout her early years, he read books to her that involved child labor. Even at 10, she was educated by her father on his activities, and she was able to read her father's volume, The Resources of California.
Caroline Bartram Bonsall, Kelley's mother, was not a less prominent figure. Bonsall was related to the famous Quaker botanist, John Bartram. Bonsall's parents died at a young age, she was then adopted by Isaac and Kay Pugh.
Kelley spent many years with her grandparents Isaac and Kay Pugh.
Kelley's great-aunt, Sarah Pugh, was a Quaker and opponent of slavery. Pugh's decision to deny use of cotton and sugar because of the connection to slave labor made an impression on Kelley from an early age. Pugh was an advocate for women and told Kelley about her life as an oppressed woman.
Kelley had two brothers and five sisters; all five sisters died in childhood. Three of her sisters were Josephine Bartram Kelley, Caroline Lincoln Kelley, and Anna Caroline Kelley. Josephine died at the age of ten months, Caroline died at the age of four months, and Anna died at the age of six years.
Kelley was an early supporter of women's suffrage after her sisters died and worked for numerous political and social reforms, including the NAACP, which Kelley helped found. In Zurich, she met various European socialists, including Polish-Russian medical student Lazare Wischnewetzky, whom she married in 1884 and with whom she had three children;Kelley, F. 1986. The Autobiography of Florence Kelley, Notes of Sixty Years. Chicago: Charles Kerr. p. 9. the couple divorced in 1891. She wanted a divorce because of his physical abuse and overflowing debt. Unable to divorce her husband for "non-support," she fled to Chicago and received full custody of her children. She kept her maiden name but preferred to be called "Mrs. Kelley."
Education In her early years, Kelley was severely sick and highly susceptible to infections and so was unable to go to school for a period of time. On days that she would miss school she would be in her father's library and read many books.
In 1882, Kelley attended Cornell University at age 16. At Cornell, she was a Phi Beta Kappa member. She wrote her thesis about disadvantaged children. The topic of her thesis was influenced by her father's teaching about underprivileged children. She was one of the first women to graduate from Cornell.
Although Kelley desired to study law at the University of Pennsylvania, she was refused admission because of her gender. In the meantime, she pursued her passion for working women by founding and attending evening classes at the New Century Guild for Working Women. Later, she attended the University of Zurich, the first European university to grant degrees to women, and she joined a group of students advocating socialism.
Kelley also earned a law degree at Northwestern University School of Law in 1894. She was then able to start a school for working girls in Pennsylvania.
Socialism and civil rights
Kelley was a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an activist for women's suffrage and African-American civil rights. She was a follower of Karl Marx and a friend of Friedrich Engels. Her 1885 translation of the latter's The Condition of the Working Class in England into English was published with Engels' approval in 1887, under her married name "Mrs. F. Kelley Wischnewetzky," and is still used today.
After college, Kelley assisted with the establishment of the New Century Guild branch of Philadelphia, along with Gabrielle D. Clements and led by Eliza Sproat Turner. It had classes and programs to assist working women. Kelley herself taught evening classes there.
The New Century Guild intended to increase the quality of working and living condition of the lower class in urban areas. The organization helped lead the battle for labor laws, such as the minimum wage and the eight-hour days, at the local, state, and federal levels. After moving to New York City with her husband and children, Kelley organized a campaign by the New York Working Women's Society in 1889 and 1890 "to add women as officials in the office for factory inspection". By 1890, the New York legislature passed laws creating eight new positions for women as state factory inspectors.
Kelley joined the Hull House settlement house from 1891 to 1899. Hull House allowed Kelley to advance in her career by providing her a network to other social organizations and an outlet to pursue the advancement of rights for working women and children. While at Hull House, Kelley bonded with Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop, who worked together as major labor reformers. All three women were of upper-middle-class background and had politically active fathers. She also became friends with Grace and Edith Abbott as well as Alice Hamilton, a professional physician specialized in preventing occupational diseases. Kelley interacted with the Chicago Women's Club under Jane Addams' sponsorship by establishing a Bureau of Women's Labor within Hull House. As an organization, Hull House provided Kelley the opportunity to bypass male organizations in order to pursue social activism for women, who were denied participation in formal politics at the time. She is credited with starting the social justice feminism movement.Woloch, Nancy (2015). A Class by Herself. Princeton University Press. p. 6.
Reform of labor conditions, in line with her socialist commitments, led to Kelley having pioneering roles in factory inspection, in organizing social movement pressure on employers, and in advocating for reform legislation and legal action over the course of her career (see below).
Kelley contributed to or led a variety of social organizations including National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Conference of Social Workers, American Sociological Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association, NAACP, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.
Factory inspection and child labor Kelley's father had toured her through glass factories at night when she was young. Kelley fought to make it illegal for children under the age of 14 to work and to limit the number of hours for children under 16. She sought to give the children the right of education, and argued that children must be nurtured to be intelligent people, beginning with her efforts in Philadelphia and New York.
The breakdown of her marriage led Kelley to flee from New York to Chicago at the end of 1891. While Kelley lived at Hull House from 1891 to 1899, her leadership of the settlement's Bureau of Women's Labor allowed her to take initiative against exploited labor of women and children in home and factory "sweatshops".
In 1892, Kelley conducted a survey of Chicago's slums at the request of U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright, after Henry Demarest Lloyd recommended her. The survey uncovered children from three-years-old working in "overcrowded tenement apartments". The survey also revealed women overworked past exhaustion, workers risking pneumonia, and children with burns. Related Congressional hearings led to the growth of reform interest within Illinois, which Kelley joined in organizing. She became a leader in a coalition of labor and civic groups to campaigning on behalf of the reform legislation. She and her allies brought state legislators on tours of sweatshops.
Later in 1892 Kelley proposed investigating the "sweating system", "the practice of contracting out work to homes of the poor," in Chicago to the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. She persuaded the bureau to hire her as a Special Agent to investigate the labor conditions of Chicago's garment industry. In her report, she described research that discovered employees working up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week with some wages that are not high enough to support the family.
The coalition campaign and Kelley's research led to new state labor reform legislation in 1893. The Illinois legislature passed the first factory law limiting work for women to eight hours a day and prohibiting the employment of children under the age of fourteen. These protective labor laws are sometimes identified as the start of the Progressive Era in social reform.
As part of the implementation of the reforms, Kelley became the first woman to hold statewide office when Governor Peter Altgeld appointed her to the post of Chief Factory Inspector for the state of Illinois, a newly created position and unheard-of for a woman. She chose five women and six men to assist her.Kelley, Florence (1859–1932). (2009). In J. Sreenivasan, Poverty and the government in America: a historical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Retrieved from https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A1679C Hull House resident Alzina Stevens served as one of Kelley's assistant factory inspectors.Davis, Allen F. "Stevens, Alzina Parsons" Notable American Women Vol. 3, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975
In the course of her Hull House work, she befriended Frank Alan Fetter when he was asked by the University of Chicago to conduct a study of Chicago neighborhoods. At Fetter's motion, she was made a member of Cornell's Irving Literary Society as an alumna, when he joined the Cornell Faculty.Josephine Goldmark, Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley's Life Story (1953); Dorothy Blumberg, Florence Kelley and the Making of a Social Pioneer (1966).
Kelley was known for her firmness and fierce energy. Hull House founder Jane Addams' nephew called Kelley "the toughest customer in the reform riot, the finest rough-and-tumble fighter for the good life for others, that Hull House ever knew."James Weber Linn, Jane Addams: A Biography, University of Illinois Press, 2000, p. 138
NAACP and work on racial equality Asked by William English Walling and Mary White Ovington, Kelley became a founding member of the NAACP. As a member of the board of directors, she belonged to committees on Nomination, The Budget, Federal Aid to Education, Anti-Lynching, and the Inequality Expenditure of School Funds. According to W.E.B. DuBois, Kelley was well known for asking pointed questions to find a course of action. Her public discussions covered black people in churches, social welfare forums, and social inequality.