Florence Kelley

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Florence Kelley

Born September 12, 1859
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died February 17, 1932
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Child-welfare activist, workplace reformer, women’s rights activist, and lawyer

Florence Kelley spent the better part of four decades campaigning for the abolition of child labor. In 1891, with three children of her own, Kelley moved into Chicago’s famous settlement house and center for social reformers, Hull House. There she gathered information on wages and working conditions for adults and children in the community. Her report inspired the Illinois state legislature to pass workplace safety laws and to hire Kelley as chief factory inspector for the state. Kelley later became secretary-general of the National Consumers’ League, an organization that used the buying power of consumers to press for fair working conditions in factories. In 1938—six years after Kelley’s death—Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, abolishing child labor and setting maximum hours and minimum wage for all working adults.

Father was a social reformer

Kelley was born into a politically active Quaker family on September 12, 1859, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was greatly influenced by her father, William Darrow Kelley, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for twenty years. William Kelley was an abolitionist (a person who fought for an end to slavery) and later a radical reconstructionist (a person who advocated equal rights for African Americans after the Civil War, 1861–65).

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