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Florence Kelley was born on September 12, 1859, in Philadelphia, to William D. Kelley and Caroline Bartram Bonsall. Her father was a self-made man who became an abolitionist, a founder of the Republican party, a judge, and a longtime member of the United States House of Representatives.
In her early years, she was severely sick, highly susceptible to infections, and therefore unable to go to school for a period of time. On days she would miss school she would be in her father's library, reading many books. She entered Cornell University in 1876, but poor health kept her from graduating until 6 years later, as a Phi Beta Kappa. She then studied at the University of Zurich, where she was influenced by Marxist thought.
In 1891 Kelley joined Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Ellen Gates Starr, and other women at Hull House. Kelley’s first job after coming to the Hull House settlement was to visit the area around the settlement, surveying the working conditions in local factories. She found children as young as three or four working in tenement sweatshops. The report of this survey, along with other following studies, was presented to the state, resulting in the Illinois State Legislature bringing about the first factory law prohibiting employment of children under age 14. Based on that success, Kelley was appointed to serve as Illinois’s first chief factory inspector. Kelley was subsequently appointed the first woman factory inspector, with the task of monitoring the application of this law.
In 1899 Kelley moved to Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York City and became general secretary of the National Consumers League (NCL). The league was started by Jane Addams and Josephine Shaw Lowell as the Consumers’ League of New York and had the objective of encouraging consumers to buy products only from companies that met the NCL’s standards of minimum wage and working conditions. Kelley traveled around the country giving lectures and raising awareness of working conditions in the United States. One important initiative of the NCL was the introduction of the White Label. Employers who met the standard of the NCL by utilizing the labor law and keeping the safety standards had the right to display the White Label. The NCL members urged customers to boycott those products that did not have a white label. Kelley led campaigns that reshaped the conditions under which goods were produced in the United States.
In 1905 Kelley, together with Upton Sinclair and Jack London, started the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. She gave a series of public lectures in numerous American universities on improving the conditions of labor. During one of these lectures Kelley met Frances Perkins, who became Kelley’s friend and an important asset in the fight for her cause.
In 1909 Kelley helped with the organization of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and thereafter became a friend and ally of W.E.B. Du Bois. Kelley met numerous obstacles, including decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that legislative reforms brought on the state level were unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Kelley persisted. She helped Josephine Clara Goldmark, director of research at the NCL, to prepare the “Brandeis Brief” for the Muller v. Oregon case, argued by Louis D. Brandeis. Through the use of statistics from medical and sociological journals the case was able to prove that long working days (often 12 to 14 hours) had a devastating effect on women’s health. In its decision, the Supreme Court declared the legality of Oregon’s ten-hour workday for women. This was an important victory not only in regulating women’s work but also in the greater battle for improving general conditions of work in America. In the year following Muller v. Oregon, the NCL launched a minimum wage campaign that would lead to the passage of laws in fourteen states.
Kelley lobbied Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, which banned the sale of products created from factories that employed children aged thirteen and under.
Florence Kelley died in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on February 17, 1932. She is buried at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery.
Florence Kelley is best known as the first general secretary of the National Consumers League and helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Among her accomplishments were the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and laws regulating hours and establishing minimum wages.
Kelley considered herself a socialist, though she was not involved in the Socialist party.
Kelly emphasizes the need for a theoretical background prior to engaging in philanthropic work. Without such background, she argues, the type of philanthropic work chosen will most likely reproduce the current capitalist socioeconomic system that leads to the need for philanthropic work in the first place. In essence, one needs theoretical preparation in order to treat the causes rather than the symptoms. She argues for this by distinguishing between two types of philanthropy: bourgeois philanthropy and philanthropy of the working class. Bourgeois philanthropy "aims to give back to the workers a little bit of what our social system robs them of, propping up the system longer," thus it is fundamentally palliative, preserving the current system in place. Philanthropy of the working class, on the other hand, aims to weaken the capitalist system through goals such as shortening the work day and limiting the working of children. These measures result in a lower amount of surplus value produced which is antithetical to the capitalist system. After such a theoretical preparation, Kelley concludes that real philanthropic work consists of elevating class consciousness.
Quotations:
"The very fact that women now form about one-fifth of the employes in manufacture and commerce in this country has opened a vast field of industrial legislation directly affecting women as wage-earners. "
"The workingmen have perceived that women are in the field of industry to stay; and they see, too, that there can not be two standards of work and wages for any trade without constant menace to the higher standard. "
"The very fact that women now form about one-fifth of the employes in manufacture and commerce in this country has opened a vast field of industrial legislation directly affecting women as wage-earners."
"The workingmen have perceived that women are in the field of industry to stay; and they see, too, that there can not be two standards of work and wages for any trade without constant menace to the higher standard."
Florence Kelley was a Phi Beta Kappa member. She was a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, Cornell's Irving Literary Society and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1919 Kelley was a founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and for several years she served as a vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Intercollegiate Socialist Society
Phi Beta Kappa
Cornell's Irving Literary Society
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
founding member
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
1919
Florence Kelley served there as vice president.
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Kelley possessed enormous energy and ability to describe the oppressive conditions of the working classes. She was particularly zealous in her efforts to improve working conditions for women.
Quotes from others about the person
"Kelley is the toughest customer in the reform riot, the finest rough-and-tumble fighter for the good life for others, that Hull House ever knew." - Hull House founder Jane Addams' nephew.
In 1884, Florence Kelley married Lazare Wischnewetzky, they had three children. Their marriage was not happy, and they divorced in 1891.
William Darrah Kelley, Sr. was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.
Lazare Wischnewetzky was a Polish-Russian physician.
Frances Perkins was an American first woman cabinet minister, and contributed toward passing the law in 1938 that effectively banned child labor for good. She also helped organize the New York Child Labor Committee in 1902 and was a founder of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904.
