Poverty and Forgotten Issues in "Nickels and Dimes"

Dr. Barbara Ehrenreich was a journalist, however she was formally educated and held a Ph.D. in cellular biology. She wrote Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, after coming up with the idea to investigate what it is like to live in poverty in America. She argued that the government does not distribute aid properly and doesn’t ensure that welfare recipients are able to find jobs, and that living on minimum wage is not possible.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a journalist and a teacher, as well as a founding member of the NAACP. She wrote On Lynchings a compilation of three pamphlets she wrote: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, and Mob Rule in New Orleans. She argued that African Americans in the south were oppressed and heinously treated, and demanding proper integration and treatment for African Americans.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America begins with an introduction where Dr. Ehrenreich presents her idea for an experiment researching how new or not particularly skilled workers survived on low income jobs.

She saw a reform to welfare as a catalyst for this issue suspecting “roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market.”(Ehrenreich 1) Based in this curiosity Ehrenreich finds her undercover identity, and decided to play the role of a stay at home mother entering the workforce with no prior experience.

She set a few criteria for her experiment: she was not allowed to use her formal education, she must take the highest paying job she was offered, she had to stay in the cheapest place she found, she would always have a car, and she would never go hungry or homeless.

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Ehrenreich planned to do her best to live in “poverty” while not depriving her health or safety. The first chapter, Serving in Florida, is set in the Key West. The first thing she did was rent an apartment for $500 with the $1000 start up fund she allotted for herself.

Ehrenreich finally acquires a job as a waitress in a restaurant “Hearthside”, as she called it, making a feeble $2.43 an hour plus tips. While working there through getting to know some of the other workers she finds out about challenges specific to the poor; including having to stay at a hotel when they could not afford an apartment, and health issues due to lack of insurance. She then quits “Hearthside” and begins waiting at “Jerry’s, which is much busier. At “Jerry’s” she learns of another struggle of being poor from the dishwasher who lived with several other dishwashers and said he would have to wait until one of them went to work in order to have an open bed to sleep in.

Ehrenreich eventually moves from her pricey apartment to a much cheaper trailer park closer to “Jerry’s”. She tried to pick up a second job cleaning at the conjoined hotel only to find it to be too much work. After attempting to juggle both jobs she, in a frustrated rage, leaves both jobs and the Key West. The second chapter, Scrubbing in Main follows her endeavor to Main. She, like in the Key West, first finds a place to live. Only this time it is a motel 6, rather than an apartment, but does later find a cheap $120 a week apartment.

Ehrenreich gets a job with “Merry Maids”, making $6.65 an hour, much more than her waiting jobs. She also takes on a weekend job serving meals at a nursing home. Ehrenreich exemplified the unfair nature of working for a company since “Merry Maids” charges $25 and hour but only pays the workers $6.65 an hour.

Although Ehrenreich was older than most of the other maids she found herself to be much healthier than the truly impoverished women. She often mentioned her oppressive manager, Ted, who made her work through a debilitating rash and made another girl work on a broken ankle. While in Main she also tired to reach out for government aid, and was met with adversity struggled with rude customer service. Upon leaving the maids she told the girls who she was and was caught off guard when they weren’t surprised.

Chapter three, Selling in Minnesota, starts out much better for Ehrenreich than her previous choices. She is able to stay at a friend’s apartment, for only watching their parrot in return. Ehrenreich finds that applications alone will not land her a job this time, so she calls a Wal-Mart and the manager liker her initiative and offers her a job, contingent on a survey and drug test that Ehrenreich is fearful of and “cleanses” for. Ehrenreich tries to get a second job, but after being promised a hefty $10 an hour only to be told that she would not be making that along with not making time and a half for a long shift she quits and stays at Wal-Mart.

Ehrenreich ran into an issue with housing after leaving her friend’s house; finding at the cheapest a $245 a week apartment, noting that it is more than she would make at Wal-Mart. She is also worried about the safety of the place due to being on the first floor with see through blinds, but is relieved when she must change rooms due to a plumbing issue. Ehrenreich falls into place at her job at Wal-Mart and begins getting better. The book ends with Ehrenreich’s evaluation of the experiment.

Here she notes that she believes there is no unskilled job. She also brings up that housing is far too high for struggling individuals to afford on top of food and other expenses. Ehrenreich mentions her trouble getting government assistance in Main, and the issue with the government’s criteria for poverty. She ends by saying “Someday… they are bound to tire of getting so little in return… There’ll be lots of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption” (Ehrenreich 222)

On Lynchings by Ida B. Wells-Barnett is a compilation of three pamphlets she published. The first, Southern Horrors is wholly based around lynchings that occurred in the South. It starts with an editorial from “Free Speech” which caused uproar for the line “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women.” (Wells-Barnett 29) This line eventually resulted in Wells’s fleeing of Memphis and not returning for fear of being lynched herself. It is also noted that white men are free to seduce anyone they want. Chapter two focuses on the murder of Ebenzer Flower, who allegedly wrote a letter to a white woman and was shot to death.

This prompted the charge that guilt or innocence of rape charges needs to be properly vetted and determined. The third chapter begins with the unjust separation of train cars and moves to the violent murders of some African Americans. Some of these deaths included skinning a man alive in Kentucky, burning another in Arkansas, and a total of 728 lynchings. One case the victim even said she was raped by a white man and an African American was still hung for this.

Chapter 4 followed the story of three young African Americans who owned a grocery store. One day a white man came in with a gun and was detained, and he threatened to return in force. The three African Americans prepared to defend themselves, however the man returned with a crew of cops, and the three men, spooked and unknowing that they were police fired on them. 31 men were arrested for this, and the original trio was taken from jail and hanged. This section ended with a call for lawmakers to severely punish lynchers.

The second pamphlet, A Red Record, opened by describing with the end of slavery came the end of the worth of the African Americans to white people. The focus however relied on the excuses for crimes against African Americans. First being to avoid race riots or stop them before they occurred. Second was to suppress the new right to vote, and produced numerous deaths via groups like the KKK or just mobs of white people. Lynchings of all degrees were usually forgotten about shortly after occurring. Wells claimed that those actually guilty of their crimes picked up these habits from white men, and ends the pamphlet addressing how the reader can help.

The final pamphlet Mob Rule in New Orleans begins with the attack of three cops on two black men sitting on a doorstep. Robert Charles shot at the police after one pulled his gun on them and ran, he was then pursued not to be subject to law but rather an angry mob of officers ordered to shoot on sight. Several mobs of young African Americans began to form in the presence of police enticing arrests and brutality. Charles went on to kill more officers, and a white mob began attacking any African American they saw.

This mob rule was then challenged for the sole purpose of preserving the state’s credit. Charles made a final stand in a burning building, killing many, however when he needed to flee the flames he shot into the crowd and was dealt hundreds of shots in return. This was not the end however the original mob broke into several smaller ones, each killing countless African Americans. This pamphlet then accounts all deaths of African Americans due to mobs.

Ehrenreich sought to prove that the minimum wage in America was not a living wage, even though it was all many could gain. Ehrenreich validated her position through actively partaking in a “poverty” life style and recounting her hardships. She also mentions on several occasions how if she were actually poor she’d be much worse off, because of issues associated with prolonged exposure to poverty. Her source was her own experience along with anecdotes from those she worked with. The only problems with her approach was that she did not truly experience poverty, which she noted, and in giving herself a car she put herself ahead of many people actually in poverty.

Also by subjecting herself to the conditions she sacrificed objectivity in her evaluation. Ehrenreich was an academic with a Ph.D. and an established journalist so that was the best outlet she knew of to make her point. Wells wanted to shed light on the horrors of the south that African Americans faced each day. She supported her position with newspapers, police records, and official death logs. The problem with this is many of these sources are subjective and bias to make their position appealing.

The good part about her sources is the articles and records can be found and thus hold a high level of validity. Wells saw the result of racial violence and how it only escalated the problem, and therefore fell back on her history of journalism as a safer outlet for her position. I believe both books are valuable for shedding light on often overlooked issues in America.

With poverty levels constantly rising and gaps between the poor and rich broadening, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America still provides valid points. While Ehrenreich’s methods did not thoroughly express a truly impoverished life style it was very close and produced valid points. Overall this book was an informative and well written. Wells’s book was harder to read, this was probably due to the time each part was written. The horrors of lynchings are often forgotten so this compilation is a valuable reminder. If you can get past the dryness of the text, the information it presents is very valuable and potentially the most accurately based depiction of the tribulations African Americans faced.