According to Norman Del Mar, "Strauss was the last one to become involved in social reform, but where his art was concerned he was equally fearless in his adoption of inflammatory subject-material.

Hence, when during his study of Dehmel his eye lighted upon this stirring poem of protest, he entertained no more thought of the disapproval it might arouse than he would a few years later, over the sexual extravagances of Wilde's Salome.

[4] Alan Jefferson wrote: Der Arbeitsmann...is a hard and remorseless setting to equally rough and rugged words that express extreme bitterness, while again the character in the poem who utters them seems, although forced to do the most wretched and demeaning work, to possess some education.

The almost military funeral march in F minor which pervades the song has a fearsome...accompaniment for the pianist, extremely difficilt as it is written.

[5]Following Strauss, several composers wrote songs that were settings of Dehmel poems, including Reger, Schoenberg, Sibelius and Szymanowski.

The poem Der Arbeitsmann comes from the volume of Dehmel's poetry titled "Weib und Welt" (Woman and the World), which a German court condemned as obscene and blasphemous, ordering that all copies of it be burned.

Wenn wir Sonntags durch die Felder gehn, mein Kind, und über den Ähren weit und breit das blaue Schwalbenvolk blitzen sehn, o dann fehlt uns nicht das bißchen Kleid, um so schön zu sein, wie die Vögel sind: nur Zeit.

When on Sundays we go through the fields, My child, And above the corn, far and wide, the blue swallows can be seen flashing, Oh, then, we lack no items of clothing to be as fine as the birds are: Just time.

He wrote "...it is tantalizing that up to the time of writing no trace of the score or parts has been found, or even evidence that the orchestral version ever reached performance".