• A few years after marrying her husband, he along with the rest of her family all died because of yellow fever. After regaining her life and getting a job the place she worked as a dressmaker burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. (“Child Labor”)
• During the time she was a dressmaker in Chicago, she witnessed something that changed the way she viewed many concepts; aristocrats of Chicago. These people believed that they were superior to everyone. They caused people to lose their jobs and walk around jobless and penniless. (“Mary Harris Jones”)

• At the time of her senior year of college, she became active in the National Consumers' League whose ultimate goal was to annihilate child labor.
• She was invited by the newly elected governor of New York at the time to be the industrial commission which was one of the members of the state labor department. Her role in that job was to inspect factories and analze and improve the people's rights.
• With her success with the job of industrial commissioner during the governor's term of Al Smith. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected governor she was promoted to secretary of labor and helped with many reforms and laws such as the Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act.

• Kelley began living at the Jane Addams’s Hull house which was known as a center for social reform.
• One of the tasks that were offered at the house was conducting parallel investigations into the overcrowded conditions of Chicago as well as the sweatshops in the tenements. Her reports were able to show a clear picture of the horrific working conditions.(“Florence Kelly”)
• She also attempted to pass many laws. Though it was passed on a local level there many obstacles prohibiting it to be passed on a national level. When attempting the Supreme Court called the laws “unconstitutional” Eventually, she was able to defeat the Supreme Court by proving that working longer hours affected the health of women. (New World Encyclopedia).

Labor Hardships are still a problem today