8 Quotes & Sayings By Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1859. She graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1890. As a music teacher, she organized her own school when she met Jane Addams when both were working for Hull House in Chicago in 1895. In 1905 they founded the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), the first national organization of women trade unionists Read more

Her autobiography of this period is Florence Kelley on Women's Political Labor (1923). She returned to the WTUL in 1921 and served as president until her death in 1935.

1
Hence, within the space of two generations there has been a complete revolution in the attitude of the trades-unions toward the women working in their trades. Florence Kelley
2
This position is untenable, and there can be no pause in the agitation for full political power and responsibility until these are granted to all the women of the nation. Florence Kelley
3
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
4
Their effort to place the women upon the same industrial level with themselves in order that all may pull together in the effort to maintain reasonable conditions of life. Florence Kelley
5
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. Florence Kelley
6
In order to be rated as good as a good man in the field of her earnings, she must show herself better than he. She must be more steady, or more trustworthy, or more skilled, or more cheap in order to have the same chance of employment. Florence Kelley
7
On the one hand, she is cut off from the protection awarded to her sisters abroad; on the other, she has no such power to defend her interests at the polls, as is the heritage of her brothers at home. Florence Kelley