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. 38DEG 27 min. 47 sec. N., and long. 89DEG 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.

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