When Sweatshops Are A Dream Rhetorical Analysis

In his New York Times essay, “where Sweatshops are a Dream,” writer Nicholas Kristof described the horrible living conditions of the people in Phnom Penh. Nicholas writes that the Phnom people believe that having a factory job is a way out of poverty and not as dangerous as scavenging on the street. He goes on to add that Democrats and the Americans are supporting Mr. Obama in the war against dangerous and cruel conditions in sweatshops. Nicholas implies that he knows that sweatshops will help the poor community because the sweatshop has improved the living standards of his wife village. His goal is to gain credibility by convincing his audience that the labor standards, the “living wages”, and the global economics of the sweatshops are offered to the poorer countries. Kristof intends to show credibility by appealing to both emotion and logic.
He acknowledges that there is an issue with the labor standards in working for a sweatshop. Many of the workers who are employed there are children. For example, Syrian children are sold by their parents to work in factories to support their families. According to Dana Thomas, “children are sometimes sold or sent off by their families to work in clandestine factories” (104). The workers are working in buildings that is hot with poor ventilation, unsanitary bathrooms and little or no breaks. Next, Kristof appeals to his audience by using logic. He points out that there is a problem with the “living wages” in the sweatshops. Many workers are employed by the sweatshop to make different products for little money. For example, Asian workers working for the Nike Company were coerced into working overtime occasionally with little or no pay. According to Rajeev Ravisankar, “many of these workers are forced to work 70 – 80 hours per week making pennies per hours” (107). The workers are being exploited by the factories for cheap