The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-28
"A SUCCESSFUL RAINMAKER
A Young Californian Has the Problem
 Scientifically.
Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Eagle.
 California. the producer Of marvels' from champion pugilists to champion potatoes, earned another claim to famH in the last year, when a young scient- list of the Golden State astonlshed be- lievers and skeptics alike by the pro duction of rain where and when ne pleased. Charles Mallory Hatfield. is the name of the young wizard of mete- O, ology. who today occupies n position in the minds of many Californians as high as that held by Luther Burbank, the creator of new forms of vegetable and fruit. the developer fthe jsur- bank potato"
 Hatfield has sprung 10 tho fore. so far as the pblic is ucencerned within year. He owes his reputation as rainmaker. not to one storm. but to such a series of successful results Tn the way of rain recipitatton that no less than thirty of the most prominent business men and merchants or Los An geles entered into a contract for the payment to Hatfield of $1.000 in gold coin. provided he could show preclpi- tation of eighteen inches of water be- fora the first of May. 1905. This con tract was entered into in December. 1904. The government gauges at JOS Angeles showed more than the stipujat- ed amount a month before the time the contract demanded and the total rain fall to date at Los Angeles Is lS.70 inches nearly twice the amount recciv- ed by this locality in any one of several years. Hatfield has been paid s'is money by the merchants without a murmur of dissatisfaction
 Hatfield's methods of operation are no more like those of the ordinary fakir than his appearance is that of the char latan. ne has. however. been compelled to operate in the face of scoffs and jeers and ridicule until the startling claims he had made were verified by such prompt results and in the way he had predicted that-~ the critics and skeptics alike were silenced. When the sun has shone for seven weeks and more without a break. when the ground is as dry and parched as bone. when the sky shows not trace of -Haoisture and that, too, at season or the year when the California rancher counts on the clouds to appear and furnish an abundant water supply for the rest of the year. then the being who enters in- to contract with reputable merchants of intelligence to produce rain and ac- tually has it falling in floods within three days. is entitled to something more than passing consideration in Cal ifornia-and that is what Hatfield did.
 How does he do 1t? Can he prove m any way that u0 IS ISSpOhSiOAc AOA the rainfall? Would 1t not have come without the effort of human being? These are the nature of the questions that tens of thousand of persons asked. even after the several successful dem onstrations by the 'rainmaker.'
 T have .only results to show as the possibilities of my process. Is the reply of Hatfield to enquirers, and truly those results arc unanswerable. In the face <.f faft hKyf hO rn- ment weather observers. with all appa- rent conditions entirely opposed to the suggestion of rain. Hatfield repeatedly during the past winter started his va por-developer going and confidently foretold the rain that came.
 T am not rainmaker. as l am call ed" declared MT. Hatfield with some show of feeling. No human being can make rain. What I do claim is that I can induce rain. can assist in bring ing about those conditions that cause a precipitation of moisture to the earth, and by a very simple method. The pro- cess is nothing more nor less than the attraction to a region of the atmos- phere where we desire rain. of the moisture laden air from another region. My process causes a condens satiOn of the water held in suspension in the air and rain is the result. What l do is not antagonistic to nature or 70 natural laws. l use no explosives nor any other method to cause precipitation by jarring the atmosphere, a method prac- ticed by some rainmakers with more or less success. These men merely do what the thunder and lightning do in a natural way. They induce con1ensa- tion by internationally the use of dyna- mite. exploding hydrogen gas balloons at great heights above the earth. etc. I induce long spells of rainy weather, not sudden gusts. and do 1t by stealing. as we might say, the moisture that might fall elsewhere.
 The thunder storm generally is that hard fall of water that ends as sudden ly as 1t began. The total amount of water that falls Is comparatively slight and to Californians would be worth but little in the way of supplying enough water for practical purposes, It Is much te sameh with the methods of producing rain by exploding bombs, etc, as practiced by Dyrenforth, Myers and others. These experiments took their cue from the rains that often fol- lowed great battles. from the thunder and from similar unusual disturban ces of the atmosphere. But even then they cannot succeed unless the air is charR- ed with a considerable degree of mois- ture.
 T began the study of chemistry and its adaptation to meteoroloGy about seven years ago. had lived in South ern California for seventeen years, and had seen how all-important was the rain each winter to all lines of indus try Lands that were scared and brown. and without growth of any sort, were made highly productive if little water could be secured to irri- gate them. l set about to discover a way to put water where 1t was needed, without the great expense that attends the majority of irrigation projects, even when the water is obtainabla.
 For four years worked along on an original line of research. I devoted my self to the study of meteoroloey and to the experiments tkat had been made by tha so- called rainmakers. l finally hit on the process that I have since tried out in