At his Iowa farm on Tuesday, May 7, 1935, Dale signed up for a mail-order course for postal clerk. What he learned from that course qualified him for the entry-level file clerk job he obtained in Washington, DC, the following April. That started his Civil Service career, most of which was in the Alcohol Tax Unit of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service. (The year Dale retired, 1968, the ATU was renamed the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the IRS and was referred to as the ATF. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 moved the ATF from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department.) Dale’s job with the ATU was to be a Gauger at different bottling plants, measuring the quantity and strength of alcohol in various products to ensure that the appropriate taxes were collected. Here is a video of one bottling plant:
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