Born in Roane County, West Virginia,[1] Dalrymple moved to Akron, Ohio in 1903 to pay off debts on his family's farm, finding work in the rubber industry.
[3] In the 1920s, he worked making tires for the Goodrich Corporation, and organized a union local in the plant.
[4] The union was affiliated to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and Dalrymple was elected as one of the federation's vice-presidents.
[5] Dalrymple opposed communism, and in 1939, he was a leading figure in efforts to remove communists from the leadership of CIO unions.
In 1944, he visited battle zones in Europe with Dwight D. Eisenhower and his logistics chief, John C. H. Lee.