Joseph Henderson’s Letter to the Editor, though short, touched on many essential components of any well written persuasive essay. Out of the ten components listed, eight were used in his brief but well worded response. His use of pulling words that triggered emotional responses such as how he mentions that parents will not be able to come home and cook for their children and families due to this mess of a schedule set and enforced by the “corporate executives”.

To start off, he opens with the citation to the article itself, so that either people can look back and see how correct he is, or for others to look back and see that Henderson was incorrect in his argument. Regardless as to what side you chose to this issue, he did a wonderful job at executing his disgust at the government in not stepping in and seeing that jobs are still not all that wonderful as the president makes them out to be. His first few words set a clear reason he wrote this article and how he is qualified to speak for others. He sets his credentials by stating he was simply a “65 year old hourly employee at a hotel”, and from then on he represents the population of those who can relate to strange hours at work.

Henderson, though strongly supporting the fact he was upset, did not have a very clear, strong objection. Over the course of the response you can pick up on hints of objection, yet not one distinct line stands out. His clarification was also not the greatest, but he still got his point across. He states how the Labor Department releases a new report every month and the president applauds himself on his success.

The premise of the article was stated clearly in that the “dehumanizing labor concept” was only piling up money for corporate executives and is giving little to no benefits to men and women like Henderson. He supports his premise by stating that he can see in his own home town, no big changes have occurred for strong job opportunities. From his perspective, it seems that things may even be turning worse.

Henderson also clearly states the truth by stating that if the president cannot give answers to miniscule questions such as, “where can these jobs be found”, and ” will these jobs allow people to buy a little house and raise a family”, then his labor policies have not been able to provide stability for all of America. His last persuasive technique comes at the very end in which he has a small flourish in which he says that we as humans can do better than this. This is a strong pull at emotions and logically as we can see that something is very wrong.

Two important components were missing in this article and though space was limited, I feel that these two were a bit too important to miss. First of which was the proposal in which one needs to say that not all hope is lost and it keeps the readers thinking something can be done. Without this it just seems as though Henderson simply ranted in the news rather than provide something to do. The other important missing piece was the call to action. Not once did he say what to do about it rather than just complain.