Page 89 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

2.2 Robert St. George Dyrenforth claimed success after his federally funded
rainmaking mission to Texas in 1891. After receiving a telegram from the weather
bureau saying “Rainstorm approaching,” Dyrenforth orders his assistants to speed up:
“Hurry up the inflation, touch off the bombs, send up the kites, let go the rackarock;
here’s a telegram announcing a storm. If we don’t hurry, it will be on us before we
raise our racket.” (cartoon by h. mayer, in farm implement news,
september 1891, 25)

it had only encouraged the “charlatans and sharpers” who were busily engaged
in defrauding the farmers of the semiarid states by contracting to produce rain
and by selling rights to use their various methods. But Senator Farwell, who had
supported the experiments, was very upbeat in an interview with the New York
World: “For twenty years I have had no doubt rain could be produced in that way,
and quite expected the experiments to be successful. . . . When Prof. Dyrenforth
makes his official report of these experiments, I expect that [the government will
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appropriate] $1 million, may be, or $500 thousand any way, for rainmaking.”
Dyrenforth ultimately claimed victory and was actually reappointed as govern-
ment rainmaker in 1892 to continue the work in San Antonio, Texas, with a
grant of $10,000, although he spent less than half of that. He distanced himself
from all the press coverage and hoopla, but claimed in his official report that his

72 | rain makerS