Auction Day on the Sparlin Farm: Orth, Minnesota, 1937

Russell Lee photographed a man at the auction sale on the Sparlin farm near Orth, Minnesota, in August 1937.

A farm auction was never just a sale. It was the whole township turning out — neighbors bidding on a lifetime of tools and machinery, watching a family’s working life change hands piece by piece.

And in the Depression years, everybody standing in that farmyard knew exactly what it meant when a farm went on the block. Lee’s photograph holds on a single face in that crowd, in the summer of 1937.

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USF33-011305-M5

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