author
Florence Kelley
1859–1932
A pioneering social reformer and translator, she turned firsthand knowledge of poverty and exploitation into a lifelong campaign for workers’ rights, child welfare, and racial justice. Her writing and organizing helped shape some of the most important reform movements in modern American history.
1 Audiobook
Some ethical gains through legislation
by Florence Kelley
About the author
Florence Kelley (1859–1932) was an American social and political reformer whose work focused on improving conditions for workers, children, and consumers. Born in Philadelphia, she studied at Cornell University and later earned a law degree from Northwestern University.
Kelley became a leading opponent of sweatshops and child labor, advocating for minimum-wage laws, shorter working hours, and stronger protections for working people. She served as the first general secretary of the National Consumers’ League and helped found the NAACP in 1909.
She was also a translator and author. Her work included an influential English translation of Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, as well as her autobiography, Notes of Sixty Years.