He was born in Bakers Corner, Indiana, USA on September 19, 1877. His family moved to the Texas panhandle when he was a child; they were some of the first settlers there. He graduated from Pacific College in Newburg, Oregon, and became a banker in Salt Lake City, Utah. He joined the National Bank of Commerce of New York City in 1917, and in 1927 became president of the East Bay National Bank in Oakland, California.

When East Bay National consolidated with the Bank of Italy to form the Bank of America, he became a vice president of the merged bank.

He was named conservator of the Union Trust Co. in Cleveland in February 1933 when that bank, the nation's sixth largest, collapsed due to mismanagement and pressures of the Great Depression. He later reorganized the company as the Union Bank of Commerce. He retired in 1944 due to ill health.

Cox married Lulu Mae Buddemer in 1902, and the couple had two children.