Moses and Ceasar, now as young adults in the Gilded Age, formed a new firm with their father: "H. Cone &amp; Sons". The brothers were traveling salesmen, sometimes known as "drummers", for their father's dry goods firm. They sold their wholesale groceries and cigars from Maryland to Alabama. In Alabama they traded with Tuscaloosa Manufacturing Company and in Georgia they did business with the Muscogee Manufacturing Company. They often traded these grocery items for textiles produced in the dozens of mills on their route, because the mills had commissaries to stock for their employees. The textiles consisted of sheetings, plaids, denims, shirtings, yarns and sewing threads. These were sold later to other customers they had that they were trading with along their route. The mills had been built across the Piedmont area of the United States during the Reconstruction period (1865–1877) and the Cone brothers learned the basics of the industry related to textiles and clothing. They even bought stock in some of the mills as an investment.