National Consumers League and Eight-hour Workdays
From 1899 through 1926 she lived at the Henry Street settlement house in New York City. From there she founded the National Consumers League, which was strongly anti-sweatshop. She worked tirelessly to establish a work-day limited to eight hours. In 1907 she threw her influence into the Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon, which sought to overturn limits to the hours female workers could work in non-hazardous professions. Kelley helped file the famous "Brandeis Brief", which included sociological and medical evidence of the hazards of working long hours, and set the precedent of the Supreme Court's recognition of sociological evidence, which was used to great effect later in the case "Brown v. Board of Education".
In 1909 Kelley helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and thereafter became a friend and ally of W. E. B. Du Bois. She also worked to help the child labor laws and the working conditions.
In 1917 she again filed briefs in a Supreme Court case for an eight-hour workday, this time for male workers, in the case "Bunting v. Oregon".
Read more about this topic: Florence Kelley
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