American Notes: Counting Heads

The vaudevillian's line used to be, "From Omaha? Nice place to be from." On the evidence of the 1970 census, the most prominent places to be from during the '60s were North Dakota, which lost 2.3% of its population, South Dakota, which lost 2.1% and West Virginia, which lost 6.2%. A favorite place to go was still California, the last continental stop in the American migration, which became the nation's most populous state, with 19,953,134 residents. In the final 1970 census figures, announced last week, California surpassed New York by 1.7 million, thus gaining five new seats in the House...

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