Page 45 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

and an appendix. With tongue still firmly in cheek, he elevates weather, or the
writing about it, to the status of a “literary specialty” and points out to his dis-
criminating readers that it ought to be “not ignorant, poor-quality amateur
weather” but the “ablest weather that can be had.”
of course, talk of the weather dominates the work, just as, in the 1890s, talk
of Robert Dyrenforth’s experiments in Texas dominated discussions of weather
control (chapter 2). In the concluding pages of The American Claimant, Twain
gives an account of the eccentric Colonel Mulberry Sellers, the epitome of Amer-
ican free enterprise, who seeks to control the world’s climates—and sell them—
by manipulating sunspots. The colonel has just drafted a long letter explaining
his scheme:

In brief, then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates
of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested. That is to say,
I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking the old cli-
mates in part payment, of course, at a fair discount, where they are in condition
to be repaired at small cost and let out for hire to poor and remote communities
not able to afford a good climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere
display. (271)

The colonel portrays himself as nothing more esoteric than a regulator and
(shades of William Ruddiman) holds that climate was manipulated in prehis-
toric times by Paleolithic peoples—for profit!

My studies have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of
new varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am convinced
that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now forgotten and unre-
corded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary evidences of artificial manipulation
of climates in bygone times. Take the glacial period. Was that produced by acci-
dent? Not at all; it was done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will
some day reveal them. (271–272)

Colonel Sellers hopes to patent a “complete and perfect” method for con-
trolling the “stupendous energies” behind sunspots. Wielding this power, Sell-
ers plans to reorganize the climates “for beneficent purposes. . . . At present they
merely make trouble and do harm in the evoking of cyclones and other kinds
of electric storms; but once under humane and intelligent control this will cease
and they will become a boon to man” (272). His plans for commercialization of
this technique include licensing it “to the minor countries at a reasonable figure”

28 | StorieS of Control