Page 19 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

Close Reading of argumentative nonfiction Texts (continued)
mills: manufacturing factories coal-breakers: coal processing plants
textile: cloth
From
Philadelphia, July 22, 1905 by Florence Kelley
1 We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread. They vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states.
2 Tonightwhilewesleep,severalthousandlittlegirlswillbeworkingintextilemills,all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy.
3 In Alabama the law provides that a child under sixteen years of age shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than eight hours, and Alabama does better in this respect than any other southern state. North and South Carolina and Georgia place no restriction upon the work of children at night; and while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills in those states, working eleven hours at night.
4 In Georgia there is no restriction whatever! A girl of six or seven years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night. And they will do so tonight, while we sleep.
5 Nor is it only in the South that these things occur. Alabama does better than New Jersey. For Alabama limits the children’s work at night to eight hours, while New Jersey permits it all night long. Last year New Jersey took a long backward step. A good law was repealed which had required women and [children] to stop work at six in the evening and at noon on Friday. Now, therefore, in New Jersey, boys and girls, after their
14th birthday, enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.
6 In Pennsylvania, until last May it was lawful for children, 13 years of age, to work twelve hours at night. A little girl, on her thirteenth birthday, could start away from
her home at half past five in the afternoon, carrying her pail of midnight luncheon as happier people carry their midday luncheon, and could work in the mill from six at night until six in the morning, without violating any law of the Commonwealth.
bobbins: a spool on which yarn or thread is wound
repealed: formally withdrawn or revoked; taken back
Commonwealth: the United States
18 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
speech
To the
National American Woman Suffrage
Association
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.