This investigation is a study of the issues involved in the disputed cases pertaining to the Oil Refining Industry which were certified to the Eighth Regional War Labor Board serving Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana during World War II.

This investigation is a study of grievance machinery in industrial relations, as it operates within the Eighth Regional War Labor Board, which serves the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. By grievance machinery is meant the formal procedure through which the worker or his representative must proceed in order to get a grievance or complaint about working conditions, wages, or other items, heard and settled.

For four hundred years the Red River Valley has been the battleground between contending Indian tribes and European races, and for almost three hundred of these years the river has been a disputed boundary line, either between rival nations, or between neighboring states of our country. The river has never been of much importance as a commercial route, yet very few rivers in all the United States have played so an important and persistent a part in this history of their sections as the Red River has played in the history of the Southwest.