William Madison Wood (June 18, 1858 – February 2, 1926) was an American textile mill owner of Lawrence, Massachusetts who was considered to be an expert in efficiency.

William Jr. was only 12 years old when his father died, and had to drop out of school and find a job to provide for his mother and younger siblings.

Fortunately for William Wood, Andrew G. Pierce, a wealthy New Bedford textile manufacturer, offered him a job working in his Wamsutta Cotton Mill.

Pierce was impressed with Wood's work and promoted him to the manufacturing department, where he learned cost structures and figures.

With the help of Andrew Pierce, William was able to find a good job with a Philadelphia' brokerage firm, where he learned about stocks and bonds.

According to the Dukes County Intelligencer, when a Fall River textile company went bankrupt, its new manager hired William as paymaster.

Within three years of his promotion, William Wood married Ayer's daughter Ellen, eventually making him a brother-in-law to General George S. Patton in 1888.

Meanwhile, Wood settled with the strikers, giving them time and a quarter for overtime and thirty cents more a week to piece-workers.

Eventually, by tracing the serial numbers on the dynamite, the authorities received a confession from the mill contractor, Ernest Pittman.

[4] After Wood's death, his fortune became the subject of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision on the interpretation of the income tax laws.

In the case of Old Colony Trust Co. v. Commissioner, 279 U.S. 716 (1929),[5] Chief Justice William Howard Taft held that where a third party (in this case, American Woolen Co.) pays the income tax owed by an individual, the amount of tax paid constitutes additional taxable income to that individual.