William Sylvis was born in Armagh, Pennsylvania, United States, on November 26, 1828, the second son of Nicholas and Maria Mott Sylvis, native-born Americans of Irish extraction who each traced their American ancestry back to the pre-revolutionary period.
He had 3 months of formal schooling; he was taught to read and write by his new employer.
He became a secretary of a local union, was obligated to correspond with other locals. He was an iron molder by trade and as a young man held part ownership in a foundry. In 1852 he moved to Philadelphia, where he became secretary of the iron molders' union in 1857 and, 2 years later, helped organize the Iron Molders International Union.
Sylvis led a movement of workingmen opposed to war, but when the Civil War began, he helped to recruit for the army. In 1863, elected president of the Molders Union, Sylvis almost single-handedly built it into the most significant labor organization of its time. In 1862 he undertook the first nationwide organizational drive, personally traveling over 10, 000 miles. He built the union from 2, 000 members in 15 locals with a treasury of $1, 600 to 6, 000 members, 54 locals, and $25, 000.
He insisted on centralized structure so that locals could not strike without national agreement, introduced a per capita tax to build up strike funds, issued union cards, and urged a closed shop where possible. Sylvis disliked strikes as representing too great a sacrifice but sanctioned them as a last resort. He also encouraged workers' cooperatives. He also advocated international labor cooperation and tried unsuccessfully to send a delegate to the Lausanne conference of the First International in 1867. In 1869 the NLU was represented at the annual meeting.
At the time of his death at the age of 41, he was urging the formation of a national Labor Reform party.
Sylvis assisted in founding the National Labor Union (NLU), one of the first American union federations attempting to unite workers of various crafts into a single national organization, became its president. Besides, Sylvis is remembered as a founder of the Iron Molders' International Union. Sylvis also created the union's first national strike fund, generated by a compulsory tax upon the membership. Although the father of practical business unionism in the United States, he advocated numerous reform measures and independent political action.
His chief interest remained unionism. "I love this Union cause, " he wrote, "I hold it more dear than I do my family or my life. I am willing to devote to it all that I am or have or hope for in this world. "
Sylvis had become an advocate of international organization of the working class through the vehicle of the International Workingmen's Association. He also declared that neither of the old political parties truly represented the interests of the working class and sought to transform the NLU into a workingmen's political party.
Sylvis had an excellent administrative abilities.
In 1851 the 23-year-old Sylvis married 15-year-old Amelia A. Thomas. The union ultimately produced three sons, who were named after contemporary heroes - Henry Clay Sylvis, Oliver Perry Sylvis, and Lewis Clark Sylvis. Following his wife's death in 1865, Sylvis remarried; he ultimately fathered a total of five children.
