William Granville Lee was born in Laprairie, Illinois, the son of James W. Lee and Sylvesta Jane (Tracy) Lee. His father's family settled in Washington County, Indiana, about 1790, and his mother's family near Zanesville, Ohio, some five years later.
He received grammar-school education at Bowen, Illinois.
Lee assisted his father, a carpenter and contractor, for a time. Railroad service early attracted him, however, and after doing student work on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, he became brakeman, in 1879, on the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fé at Emporia, Kansas. Transferred shortly to the Raton-New Mexico Division, he was promoted late in 1880 to conductor on the run between Lajunta, Colorado, and Las Vegas, which position he held until 1884, when he accepted the office of deputy recorder of deeds for Ford County, Kansas.
Returning to railroad service four years later, he became brakeman and switchman on the Wabash and subsequently on the Missouri Pacific. On June 25, 1890, he joined the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen at Sedalia, Missouri. Early in 1891 he secured a position as brakeman, and later as freight conductor, with the Union Pacific out of Kansas City, and promptly organized there a new lodge, which he served as master, chairman of the local committee, and member of the general committee for the Union Pacific.
He became first vice-president (first vice grand master) of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen on August 1, 1895, was promoted to president on January 1, 1909, and held that office continuously until July 1, 1928, when he was transferred to the position of general secretary and treasurer. Until 1899 his headquarters were at Peoria, Illinois, but for the last thirty years of his life they were at Cleveland, Ohio.
Obliged to meet many changes in conditions and in legal regulations during his long period of leadership, especially during the war and post-war years, he proved himself a shrewd, far-seeing, and energetic business executive. In 1920 Lee's wisdom and courage were severely tested by a series of unauthorized strikes, and he showed himself an uncompromising upholder of the sanctity of contracts by expelling more than one-sixth of the organization's membership; in 1921 he was credited with having done more than any other man to avert the threatened nationwide strike of the railroad brotherhoods. His failure of reëlection to the presidency in 1928 was due primarily to his age and physical condition.
In 1917 he was stricken with cancer, which recurred in 1923 and in 1927, perhaps as a result of his postponing a first operation in order to continue his fight for the Adamson law. Early in 1927, with his wife, he sailed for a cruise on the Mediterranean. When he returned he was welcomed by a reception and dinner in New York. Later, his malady reappeared and he grew steadily worse until his death at his home in Lakewood, Cleveland. He was a Congregationalist, a Mason, and an anti-La Follette Republican. His friendliness, sincerity, and undoubted integrity made him popular with opponents as well as with friends, and created public confidence in the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen as a great business organization ably and conservatively managed.
Lee was known as a leader of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen for more than a quarter of a century. Under his administration the organization grew steadily in membership and secured great material benefits through collective bargains and standardized wages, through the general introduction of satety appliances, and through legislation which finally reduced the hours of railway workers to eight a day.
Lee had married Mary R. Rice in Chicago on October 15, 1901.
