Cone Mills Corporation (and predecessor Proximity Manufacturing Company and its other subsidiary and affiliated companies) manufactured denim and other textiles chiefly in North Carolina and South Carolina. Moses Herman Cone (1857-1908), Ceasar Cone (1859-1917), and other Cone family members began investing in the textile industry in the late nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century were world leaders in textile manufacturing. The collection consists of the records of Cone Mills Corporation, Proximity Manufacturing Company (especially Proximity Cotton Mill, Proximity Print Works, and White Oak Mill), and other companies. Materials include correspondence, reports, minute books, a variety of financial recordkeeping volumes, contracts, blueprints, photographs, and audiovisual materials. The Cone Export & Commission Company series (Series 1) and Proximity Manufacturing Company series (Series 2) document textile mill operations at every level, from plant facility planning to manufacturing costs and sales to employment and mill village welfare. The records of Bernard M. Cone (1874-1956) and Herman Cone (1895-1955) in the Executives series (Series 5) likewise relate to management of financial and business affairs at Proximity plants and also document labor and unemployment in the textile industry, public perceptions of mill business operations, segregated education and recreation in mill villages, and civic and charitable involvement outside the mill, including the founding of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. The Revolution and other mills series (Series 3) contains the business and financial records of textile companies and plants owned and operated in full or in part by the Cone family, including Revolution Mills, Minneola Manufacturing Company, and others. The records of Ceasar Cone II (1908-1986) in the Executives series (Series 5) document the reorganization of all of the affiliated and subsidiary companies in 1945. The Cone Mills Corporation series (Series 4) relates to the financial and business affairs of the reorganized company. Other materials in the series concern public relations functions--especially advertising, employee relations, community relations and outreach, and program sponsorship of the Miss North Carolina pageant--and audio visual materials for equipment and safety training of textile workers. The remaining records in the Executives series (Series 5) document Cone Mills Corporation policies, finances, products, and involvement in external industry-related and non-profit organizations under the leadership of Lewis Morris and his assistant Dewey Trogdon. The Photographs series (Series 6) includes photographs, negatives, and slides depicting Cone family members, Cone Mills plants, employees, schools, workplace safety instruction, recreation, and the Miss North Carolina pageant. Also included are lantern slides related to studies conducted by the research and development division of Cone Mills. The Other materials series (Series 7) contains Cone company and family history, including a scrapbook concerning labor union negotiations in the 1950s; genealogy; writings about the Cone companies and family; H. Cone and Sons Company records; and miscellaneous publications, including a film, possibly by H. Lee Waters, of people in a mill village in Greensboro, N.C.
