AMERICAN NOTES: The Fallow Center

Since 1790, when the nation’s population concentrated statistically at a spot near Baltimore, the American center of gravity has tipped ever westward. Census results show it moving across the map like flowing lava: in 1870 east of Cincinnati, in 1900 near Indianapolis, in 1940 on the Indiana-Illinois line. Today, the computers calculate, the population center lies at lat. 38° 27 min. 47 sec. N., and long. 89° 42 min. 22 sec. W. That puts it in the middle of one of Farmer Lawrence Friederich’s fields outside of Mascoutah, Ill., just southeast of St. Louis.

There is a temptation to look for microcosmic America in its population center. The town worries about a possible migration of blacks from East St. Louis and about marijuana wafting in from the cities. Mascoutah is a resolutely conservative place; yet it turns out that the nation’s new population center lies in the middle of a field that slumbers fallow because the U.S. pays Farmer Friederich not to plant anything there.