Should Shop Assistants Marry?

 In GK Chesterton's essay In Topsy-Turvy Land he writes of encountering a poster which asks "Should Shop Assistants Marry?" He wonders whether in some ascetic period this would have meant are they too saintly, or in pagan places whether they are too vile, but is puzzled at it in Edwardian London. At first.

We must face, I fear, the full insanity of what it does mean. It does really mean that a section of the human race is asking whether the primary relations of the two human sexes are particularly good for modern shops. The human race is asking whether Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrove.

He goes on to ask other similar questions "Should Hats Have Heads in Them?" or "Should We Take Brides With Our Wedding Rings?"

In short, instead of asking whether our modern arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains, laws, and concrete institutions are suited to the primal and permanent idea of a healthy human life... they only ask whether that healthy human life is suited to our streets and trades...This is the most enormous and at the same time the most secret of the modern tyrannies of materialism. In theory the thing ought to be simple enough. A really human human being would always put the spiritual things first.