cost of that sizable investment over as large an operation as possible(you wouldn't invest in a paint sprayer to paint a single toothpick). The aforementioned mechanical revolution found particular favor in the rapidly expanding agricultural sector in the USA; especially in the Midwest and Plains, where land was plentiful but labor s Pfeffer(1983) argues that the variability of available labor across the USA specifically looking at family farm- ing in the Great Plains, corporate farming in California, and sharecropping in the South helps explain the multiple trajectories taken by agriculture in the USA. Throughout much of Europe, conversely, the situation was just the opposite at the turn of twentieth century, where population was increasing but the arable land base remained unchanged, much as it did for centuries.