Florence Kelley died in Philadelphia after more than four decades leading U.S. campaigns for labor and child welfare reform.
Florence Kelley died on February 17, 1932, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of 72, having devoted more than forty years to reshaping American labor law and social policy.
At the time of her death, Kelley remained general secretary of the National Consumers League, a post she had held since its founding in 1899, and she continued to be a vocal advocate for minimum wage laws, child labor restrictions, and protections for women workers even as conservative courts struck down many of the era's protective statutes.
Her death came amid the early years of the Great Depression, a period that would soon validate much of her life's advocacy as the New Deal absorbed many of the reforms she had championed—minimum wage laws, child labor restrictions, and federal social welfare programs—into national policy through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Social Security Act of 1935.
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who had worked closely with Kelley, eulogized her as one of the most effective reformers of her generation. Her legacy lived on through the institutions she built (the National Consumers League), the laws she inspired, and the generations of social workers, lawyers, and policymakers she trained and mentored throughout her career at Hull-House and beyond.