Use of Rhetoric in Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and DimeIn her article, Nickel and Dime, Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of what it means for unskilled women to be forced to be entered the job market after the ongoing welfare reform in 1998. Ehrenreich wanted to capture her experience by recounting her method of "uncovered journalism" in a chronological order of presenting the events that took place during her undertaking. His methodologies and actions were somewhat unorthodox in practice. This was not supposed to be a social experiment aimed at recreating a social scenario of poverty, but was actually supposed to see if she could maintain a lifestyle working in low-wage jobs the way 4 million women were about to experience it. Although Ehrenreich makes good use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos), he is very effective in portraying pathos, trying to make us understand why we should care about a social situation like this through credibility, emotion, and logic. For most people conducting experiments, Ehrenreich must first establish the credibility of his knowledge on the subject. He does this in his introduction in numerous ways. Ehrenreich comes out saying he has a PhD in biology but has a passion for writing. It begins with his exposure to low-wage jobs using his sister and husband as partners for over a decade. Her sister, who worked for the phone company as a sales representative, factory worker and receptionist, described her experience as "the desperation of being a wage slave." Her husband worked for $4.50 an hour in a warehouse before he was lucky enough to land a well-paying job with the Teamsters workers union. Ehrenreich's use of statistical information also demonstrates to his audience that he has actually done his research on this topic. subject. He admits that poverty is a social issue he talks about often. He studied that in 1998 the National Coalition for the Homeless reported that on average nationally it would take a wage of about $8.89 to afford a one-bedroom apartment and that the odds that common welfare recipients find a job that pays a “living wage” was about 97 to 1. Ehrenreich experiences this statistic firsthand when he began his job search in Key West, Florida, when he applied for 20 different jobs, ranging from waiters cleaning, and of those questions, zero were answered..