Daniel, Cletus E. Bitter Harvest: A History

Daniel, Cletus E. Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm workers, 1870-1941. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

The United Farm Workers of America Website praised Cletus E. Daniel's book Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm workers, 1870-1941 as "well-researched," (accessed at http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/ufw.html, last modified September 2003). The Journal of San Diego History's book reviewer Lawrence J. Jelinek also praised the sensitivity of the work, as well as its comprehensive nature. (Accessed at http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/83fall/,1983, website last modified September 2003) These reviews both testify to the work's sympathetic treatment of early American labor history as well as its attempt to provide a sweeping view of the California labor movement.

However, none of these reviewers stress what is the most interesting and important part of Daniel's book, which is his stress upon how little Franklin Delano Roosevelt's so-called New Deal benefited ordinary farm workers. Daniels shows how the New Deal was only a New Deal for some Americans, disproportionately benefiting those who lived on the East Coast and selectively benefiting only certain farmers and farm workers, usually only large, land-owning, and labor-controlling farmers. Daniels additionally adds a very important 'racial' component to his analysis of the New Deal. Chicano farm workers in particular were not protected by protective legislation passed in the 1930's because they were often not naturalized citizens or simply did not own any land, unlike the small and large property owners New Deal legislation was designed to protect.