Moses H. Cone

At 51 years old, Moses H. Cone physical status not available right now. We will update Moses H. Cone's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Moses and Ceasar dealt much with textile mill owners in their travels as salesmen. They not only sold normal dry goods, but introduced into their wares ready-made clothing as well as certain fabrics like denim. This gave them considerable experience then in textile products and the textile industry. The Cone brothers soon invested in Southern textile mills which generally had over a 20% return on average. One of these companies the Cones invested into was C. E. Graham Manufacturing of Asheville, North Carolina, an up-and-coming newly formed textile mill. Moses became its president in 1882. The company's original builder Charles Edward Graham continued with its on-site management while Moses pursued other investments and ventures.

In 1880 Moses moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. Soon thereafter he joined Simon Lowman and Charles Burger to form Cone Brothers, Lowman, and Burger Clothing Manufacturers based in Baltimore. Moses discovered the need for durable clothing for the blue-collar people of the High Country and fulfilled this need with denim and plain, fabric-based clothing.

In 1890 Moses and Ceasar were contemplating even grander ventures and formed the Cone Export & Commission Company in New York City along with Anderson Price and Jay C. Guggenheimer as the other major stockholders. They developed by the early 1890s what was called by the Northern politicians the "Plaid Trust", which was a commission clearing house to control the production market on checks and plaids. They were a marketer of Southern cloth mill-goods to South America in competition with Great Britain. Initially the par value of the capital stock of their new company was fifty dollars per share. There were 20,000 shares of the company, so the value of this new firm was placed at one million dollars. By 1892 they moved from New York City to Greensboro, North Carolina. Eventually they took in another forty mills over time and completely controlled the market. Later the United States antitrust laws broke up the agreements the Cones had with the various mills to control the market.

In 1895 Moses purchased a defunct steel mill and developed it into a large cotton mill called Proximity Manufacturing Company that produced blue and brown denim. The reason it was called Proximity was because of its location near the cotton fields of the Old South that produced the raw material needed to produce fabric. Their competitors in the New England states were located much farther away from the cotton fields. He built additional mills throughout the Greensboro area and the Deep South and soon became one of the biggest producers of the denim fabric in the world, becoming known as "The Denim King" in the 1890s.

Moses with his brother Ceasar built another mill in 1905 about a mile away from Proximity Mill to help them supply the world's demand for denim. They named the new enterprise White Oak Cotton Mills for the 200 year old oak tree that stood near the mill. It became the largest denim mill in the world and largest cotton mill in the southern United States. Cone Mills Corporation was the world leader in the manufacturing of denim and largest supplier in the world. In the early 1900s Cone began supplying denim to Levi Strauss and Company, a relationship that lasted for about 100 years. Moses was instrumental in the development of Watauga Academy, now known as Appalachian State University. In 1899, Moses donated $500 to the founders; it was the largest single donation received for the school's construction.

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