Page 110 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

States has some claim as well as ourselves, what about the Monroe Doctrine? . . .
International complications, international conflagrations may take place, and for
aught we know we may be involved in a tremendous bill for damages. (562)

Foster thought that the weight of scientific opinion was not in favor of Hatfield:
“I believe the United States [Weather] Bureau . . . and they give it as their sci-
entific opinion that he is an unmitigated fake and that anybody who has truck
with Mr. Hatfield is very close to being bereft of good common sense. But that
is only [the opinion of ] a weather bureau. What is a weather bureau compared
with the Yukon council and the Dominion government?” (563). The parliament
ultimately decided that rainmaking was indeed the business of the local Yukon
council, and Hatfield found a way to claim “success” for his efforts.
Hatfield was once described as “smiling, buoyant and fast talking, with a
strong chin, large nose, high forehead and light blue, twinkling eyes . . . a qui-
etly dressed, slender man of middle height with square shoulders, who is crowd-
30
ing forty” (figure 3.4). By another description, he was “a man on a mission . . . ,

3.4 Closely guarded to keep the inventor’s secret. Charles Mallory Hatfield’s rain-
making plant on the shore of Chappice Lake, Alberta: “A deck surmounted by an open
tank containing chemicals.” The inset shows Hatfield. (“the rain-maker: fighting
drought with chemicals,” illustrated london news, february 4, 1922)

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