See, there they troop from fields and farmyards; they’ve tilled the earth and turned it to a smiling garden, and fruits in plenty, enough for all who live, have paid their pains — yet poor are they and naked, starving; for not to them, or others who are needy, belongs earth’s blessing, but solely to the rich and mighty one who calls men and the earth his own.

— RICHARD WAGNER, The Revolution, Prose Works, Vol. VIII, Chap. 14, p. 235. (Translation of W. A. Ellis).