The son of a wealthy Saint Louis, Missouri politician and banker, he was just 21 years old in 1881 when he and a colleague, Thomas Gardiner, put together the first issues of the new venture to be printed on the presses of the Mirror Publishing Company.
Later he was a real estate man and a Los Angeles city police commissioner. Cole worked on a Saint Louis newspaper, then traveled west to Portland, Oregon, and to Woodland, California. He came to Los Angeles specifically to start a newspaper, which ran into financial difficulty and was taken over by General Harrison Gray Otis in 1882.
Cole returned to Saint Louis, where he went into business with his father, Nathan Senior, who had been a United States. Representative in Congress and Mayor of Saint Louis.
Cole soon returned to Los Angeles, where he remained until he died on December 7, 1921. He began his Los Angeles career as a Republican editing a Republican newspaper, but he switched to the Democrats and became a leader of the local party.
He was a Democratic committeeman in the first presidential election campaign of Woodrow Wilson. He was appointed to the police commission by Mayor Arthur C. Harper.
Cole was an early member of the Jonathan Club and was a Mason and a member of the Sons of the Revolution.
