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, and children's rights 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.
Kelley was influenced mainly by her father and said, "I owe him everything that I have ever been able to learn to do." Pugh was an advocate for women and told Kelley about her life as an oppressed woman. the couple divorced in 1891. She wanted a divorce because of his physical abuse Kelley herself taught evening classes there. 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. 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. 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.
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, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Hull House resident Alzina Stevens served as one of Kelley's assistant factory inspectors.
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.
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."
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. That launched her to create the Sterling Discrimination Bill, which was an attack against the Sterling Towner Bill, which proposed a federal sanction of $2.98 per capita for teachers of colored children and $10.32 per capita children at white schools in 15 schools in the South and Washington, D.C. The NAACP held the position that it would perpetuate the continual discrimination and neglect of the public schools for black people. She and W. E. B. DuBois disagreed on how to attack this bill. She wanted to add the language that guaranteed equitable distribution of funding regardless of race. DuBois believed that there should be a clause added specific to race because it would require the federal government to enforce that the schools for black people to be treated fairly.
Kelley believed that if anything was added about race to the bill, it would not pass through Congress. She wanted to get the bill passed and then to change the language. Therefore, when the bill was passed, it called for equal distribution to the schools to be handled by the states based on population. The issue remained on whether or not the states would distribute the money equally.
Kelley disagreed with the NAACP and W.E.B. DuBois on other issues as well. The Sheppard-Towner Act was the most contentious issue of disagreement between them. The act provided aid to mothers and children during pregnancy and infancy. The NAACP and DuBois were opposed to the bill because there were no provisions to prevent discrimination in the distribution of funds to black mothers. Unlike her stance on equitable distribution of educational funds, Kelley was not demanding any provisions for equitable distribution, as she knew the bill would never pass if the issue of race was introduced, especially with the opposition already present from southern states. Kelley believed that it was more important to pass the legislation, even in its limited form, so that the funding would be secured and the primary principle of social welfare would be established. Eventually, Kelley, earned the support of the NAACP on the issue with the promise to monitor the bill if it passed and to work tirelessly toward the equity of all, regardless of race.
In her work there, she built 64 Consumers Leagues to promote and to pass labor legislation. Kelley often acted as a representative to address state legislators and expanded the NCL network through women's clubs. She worked hard to establish a workday limited to eight hours. In 1907, she threw her influence into a Supreme Court case, Muller v. Oregon, an attempt to overturn limits to the hours female workers could work in non-hazardous professions. Kelley helped file the famous Brandeis Brief, which included sociological and medical evidence of the hazards of working long hours and set the precedent of the Supreme Court's recognition of sociological evidence, which was used to great effect later in Brown v. Board of Education. Her pursuit to enforce the eight hour work day for women was later declared unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1895 because it restricted women from making contracts for longer hours.
In 1909, Kelley helped create the NAACP and thereafter became a friend and ally of W. E. B. Du Bois. She also worked to help improve child labor laws and working conditions.
In 1917, she again filed briefs in a Supreme Court case for an eight-hour workday, now for workers "in any mill, factory or manufacturing establishment," in the case Bunting v. Oregon.
Kelley's NCL sponsored a "Consumer's 'white label'" on clothing that restricted garment production with child labor and working conditions against state law. She led the National Consumers League until her death, in 1932.
thumb|Part of Booth's map of [[Whitechapel, 1889. The red areas are "well-to-do"; the black areas are "semi-criminal".]]
Hull House Maps and Papers
Kelley created a series of maps and data visualizations for Hull House Maps and Papers, a series of essays published in 1895. Along with the United States Bureau of Labor and Carroll D. Wright, the information was collected by going door to door in Chicago neighborhoods and polling the community using questionnaires.
Kelley worked with Josephine Goldmark to provide the information organized by lawyer Louis Brandeis in what became known as the Brandeis Brief to demonstrate the harmful effects of overtime on women's health.
Kelley also helped lobby Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, which banned the sale of products created from factories that employed children thirteen and under. In addition to this act, she also lobbied for the Sheppard-Towner Act, which created the nation's first social welfare program to fight against maternal and infant mortality by funding health care clinics specialized in those areas.
In 1912, she formed the US Children's Bureau, a federal agency to oversee children's welfare.
Death
Kelley died, age 72, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on February 17, 1932. She was interred at Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery.
She was named an Angel hero by The My Hero Project.
Publications
The responsibility of the consumer. New York City: National Child Labor Committee, 1908.
Kelly argues that it is the responsibility of the consumer to use their buying power to discourage moral ills regarding work conditions, such as child labor. Succinctly put, she argues for the modern phrase, "vote with your dollar." Further, in order to judge labor conditions, she argues that citizens must demand adequate statistics about such conditions from their state and federal governments.
The Present Status of Minimum Wage Legislation. New York City: National Consumers' League, 1913.
Provides a brief history of the beginnings of minimum wage legislation in England and the United States. Kelley cautions the states against drawing up too quickly a hastily and poorly written law such that a court may strike it down thereby setting a precedent for similar laws. Finally, Kelly briefly explores how society ultimately bears the cost for not paying a sufficient minimum wage, through caring for the poor and through the maintenance of prisons.
Modern Industry: in relation to the family, health, education, morality. New York: Longmans, Green 1914.
Women in Industry: the Eight Hours Day and Rest at Night, upheld by the United States Supreme Court. New York: National Consumers' League, 1916.
Twenty Questions about the Federal Amendment Proposed by the National Woman's Party. New York: National Consumers' League, 1922.
Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley. Chicago: C.H. Kerr Pub. Co., 1986.
The Need of Theoretical Preparation for Philanthropic Work. 1887.