Auctioneer Walter Wilkerson, echoing a chant perfected during the Civil War, leads the way, calling off the lots in a language that he and the cigarette company buyers appear to understand. Every so ...

WILSON, N.C. -- The procession snakes its way around the burlap-wrapped piles of tobacco like some giant, many-headed caterpillar. Auctioneer Walter Wilkerson, echoing a chant perfected during the ...

The auctioneer chant is nothing short of an art form, pulling in the casual passerby and luring dedicated followers to each event. Scott Schuster's chant is a familiar one in the Grand Forks, N.D., ...

BUXTON, N.D. -- There is more to an auctioneer's chant than you might think, 28-year auctioneering veteran Darrel Yoder says. Things like clarity, fill-in words and momentum all add up to that ...

-[AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 7 [AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 700 and a half. [AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 1,300, [AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 1,300 [AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 14 [AUCTIONEER CHANT]. 14 you want ...

The great, wooden-floored warehouse is neatly piled with bunches of tobacco leaves. Buyers inspect them, fingering them, and measuring them with their eyes. The auctioneer, at one end of the room, ...

In a voice which would have made even the Gettysburg Address sound like the chant of a tobacco auctioneer, the clerk of the U.S. Senate droned out the message which President Truman and his aides had ...