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I came in just after the War, and the program of weeding out the over-loaded Federal Government had begun. The veteran's preferences had begun to operate. That was what we were chiefly working on--veterans coming back under the law that was passed under their anlistment or draft which gave them a right to get their jobs back, and to bump anybody out.

Well, of course, some of the people bumped out had proved to be a great deal more competent than the veteran whose place they took, and that was always a painful process. For these things, we were principally engaged in the first year in making the rules and regulations. They had not been made, you see. The law just said, “the veterans shall get their jobs back.” How it was going to be affected, nobody knew. But we had to make the regulations and we had to make the original regulations for the reduction in service, what are now called the R.I.P., Reductions in Force.

The R.I.F. began in '46. It began right after the War, and it's been going on ever since. Then, during the Korean period, we had another boom of employment, and the people who had been R.I.F. came back, and had to be RIF'd again. The Eisenhower Administration came in. There was lots of grumbling about the R.I.F., you remember, in the last year of the Truman Administration. It was very painful.

Of course the people that get RIF'd that you don't know