Florence Kelley 1859-1932, American social worker and reformer, b. Philadelphia, grad. Cornell, 1882, and Northwestern Univ. law school, 1894. Married in 1884 to a Polish doctor, Lazare Wishnieweski, she divorced him six years later and became a Hull House resident. A confirmed socialist and active in many reforms, Kelley devoted most of her energies toward securing protective labor legislation, especially for women and children. From 1899 she served for many years as director of the National Consumer's League, which strove for industrial reform through consumer activity. Her writings include Ethical Gains through Legislation (1905) and Modern Industry (1914).

Bibliography: See J. Goldmark, Impatient Crusader (1953); D. R. Blumberg, Florence Kelley (1966); K. Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work (1995).

Kelley, Florence (1859–1932), social reformer.Kelley was born into a patrician Philadelphia Quaker and Unitarian family, the daughter of William Darrah Kelley, a leading Republican party politician, and Caroline Bonsall Kelley. Graduating from Cornell University in 1882, Kelley studied at the University of Zurich where in 1884 she married Lazare Wischnewetzky, a Russian Jewish socialist medical student, and forged a lifelong identity as a socialist. Between 1885 and 1888, she gave birth to three children. Returning to New York City in 1886, she found it impossible to continue the political commitments begun in Zurich. In 1891, after Lazare began beating her, she fled with their children to Chicago, residing at Jane Addams's Hull House until 1899. In 1895, she completed a law degree at Northwestern University.

Kelley established her national reputation during a three‐year tenure as Illinois's Chief Factory Inspector (1893–1896), enforcing the state's pathbreaking eight‐hour law for working women and children. In 1899, she assumed the position she occupied until her death, secretary‐general of the newly‐formed National Consumers' League (NCL). Returning to New York City, she lived at the Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Building sixty‐four local leagues by 1906, Kelley, in cooperation with other women's organizations, worked to make American government more responsive to the needs of working people, especially wage‐earning women and children. Using gender‐specific legislation as a surrogate for class legislation, Kelley defended the constitutionality of legislation limiting the hours of working women, then successfully extended those protections to men. Similarly, the NCL pioneered the passage of state minimum‐wage laws for women that in 1938 led to a federal minimum‐wage law for women and men.
See also Child Labor; Consumer Movement; Progressive Era; Socialism; Women in the Labor Force.

Bibliography

Kathryn Kish Sklar, ed., Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley, 1986.
Kathryn Kish Sklar , Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830–1900, 1995.

Kathryn Kish Sklar

Florence Kelly

Florence Kelley (1859-1932), American social worker and reformer, fought successfully for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women.

Florence Kelley was born on September 12, 1859, in Philadelphia, Pa., the daughter of U.S. congressman William Darrah Kelley. 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 1887 she published a translation of Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working-class in England in 1844, to which Engels added a preface in 1892.

In 1884 Kelley married a Polish-Russian physician, Lazare Wischnewetzky, and set up housekeeping in New York City. Their marriage was not happy, and she left him in 1889, moving to Chicago with their three children. Although they divorced and she reassumed the name of Kelley for herself and her children, she retained her title of "Mrs."

After 1889 Kelley turned in earnest to the study of social conditions, taking special interest in women and children working in the Chicago trades. In 1891 she joined Jane Addams and her associates at Hull House. Kelley's analyses of sweatshops and slum houses resulted in a new child labor law, and she was appointed chief factory inspector for Illinois. When she found her efforts to enforce the child labor law and the compulsory education law frustrated by uncooperative city attorneys, she decided to study law. She earned her law degree at Northwestern University in 1894. Her reports and legislative achievements were outstanding milestones in social investigation.

In 1899 Kelley returned to New York to become secretary of the National Consumers' League. She lived at the Henry Street Settlement House and worked with numerous reformers and reform organizations for minimum wage laws, woman's suffrage, and Federal aid for mothers and babies. Kelley considered herself a socialist, though she was not involved in the Socialist party. She wrote Some Ethical Gains through Legislation (1905) and helped establish what became known as the "Brandeis brief" (named for Justice Louis D. Brandeis), a process of integrating facts and experiences in legal action to demonstrate the need for changing laws according to human realities.

Kelley later wrote the Modern Industry in Relation to the Family, Health, Education, Morality (1914) and a compilation, The Supreme Court and Minimum Wage Legislation (1925). She died in Germantown, Pa., on February 17, 1932.

Further Reading

Josephine Goldmark, a friend and associate of Florence Kelley, wrote Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley's Life Story (1953). Sketches of Kelley appear in Lillian D. Wald, Windows on Henry Street (1934); Jane Addams, My Friend Julia Lathrop (1935); and James Weber Linn, Jane Addams: A Biography (1935). □