January/February 2002
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York bureau chief for Scrap.
Charles Lipsett, president and publisher of Atlas Publishing Co. Inc. (New York City)—my employer for about 15 years—came from hardy New England stock and was a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman. Domineering, headstrong, and penny-pinching, he managed to build a publishing empire that, at one time, offered more than a dozen magazines and daily trade papers.
Atlas Publishing’s staples included the Daily Metal Reporter, which competed with the American Metal Market; the Daily Mill Stock Reporter, which published news about waste paper, cotton and woolen rags, burlap, and fibers; and the Waste Trade Journal, a pioneer in reporting on the scrap markets, not to mention the company’s largest moneymaker.
The company also published weekly magazines like the Federal Purchasing Record, which listed what the U.S. government was purchasing for defense purposes prior to World War II, and later the Federal Sales Guide, which reviewed what the government was selling in the postwar period.
Now and then, Atlas would launch a new publication, as was the case with the Daily Chemical Market. I wanted to work on a daily paper but was, at first, assigned to the Federal Purchasing Record. When I asked to work on the chemical paper, Lipsett only shrugged. He then proceeded to hire a new editor for the position, who sat at his desk for four weeks preparing for the fateful publication day, reading other chemical magazines, learning the chemical symbols, acquiring all the necessary background. Then, on publication day, he literally fell apart, and Joseph Zimmerman, the editor-in-chief, called me in to assist. I edited the chemical paper for a few months until an opportunity opened up on Waste Trade Journal. I took that job just in time because the chemical paper folded two weeks later.
Founded in 1905, Waste Trade Journal was the oldest and most respected publication in the scrap field, while Daily Metal Reporter benefited from Zimmerman’s close association with the top executives among the metal producers. While building these publications, Lipsett became acquainted with the rich and famous. He was friendly with Bernard Baruch, the internationally renowned financier, as well as Sen. Stuart Symington, among others.
In the period when the United States was edging into the Korean conflict, Symington held an important Senate committee post dealing with the war effort. One day, Lipsett summoned some of his key staff to his office and told us that Symington wanted us to prepare weekly “confidential” reports on the metal markets, covering aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, precious metals, zinc, and even ferrous scrap—“short, concise reports that will be transmitted directly to the senator for his personal information every week,” Lipsett said in a conspiratorial voice.
For months, we laboriously gathered information, wrote reports, placed them on Lipsett’s desk, and imagined them being transmitted to some secret briefing room in Washington where Symington and a few cohorts would read that secondary aluminum smelters were paying such-and-such for scrap, nodding at this info and entering it in some secret code book. Later, we wondered whether Symington ever saw the reports or, if he did, whether he made heads or tails out of the copper market.
Another day, shortly after World War II, Lipsett called me to his office to announce that the Defense Department had asked him to recommend someone to go study Japanese scrap sites left over from the war and determine if the scrap was available for shipment to the United States. Japan had reportedly accumulated mountains of scrap, scrap that the U.S. military felt was needed in this country.
“How would you like to go to Japan?” Lipsett asked me.
“Very much,” I replied.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
As it turned out, I didn’t get to go. Shrewd publisher that he was, Lipsett decided it would be better to turn the “mission” over to someone in the scrap industry. So Harry Marley of Marley’s (Syracuse, N.Y.) got the nod.
To be sure, my years at Atlas Publishing had their ups and downs. One of the ups was that the company had its own printing plant, which was unusual among small publishing houses. We were then located on 25th Street on Manhattan’s West Side, between 9th and 10th avenues. The printing plant was on the ground floor, and the editorial and administrative departments were on the first floor. From that printing department and its excellent staff, I learned exactly how words got into print, knowledge that was invaluable to me as areporter.
Another one of the ups came from working on various newspapers and magazines at Atlas, which gave me broad journalistic experience and enabled me to meet different kinds of people. One day, for instance, I met a “new” editor who turned out to be a famous ex-editor of the New York Post who had recently lost his job and his wife (who happened to own the newspaper).
Some of our editors went on to bigger and better things such as influential dailies and popular magazines, prominent book publishers, or PR firms. Me, I enjoyed my tenure as market editor of Daily Metal Reporter and principal editor of Waste Trade Journal. Those positions gave me great satisfaction and helped me gain insight into the metal and scrap industries.
Part of my job at Atlas was to ghost-write books that were published with Lipsett’s byline. He wanted his name to go down in posterity. Over the years, he had angry incidents with ISIS and NARI—the scrap industry trade associations—sometimes sounding like Rodney Daingerfield with his refrain, “I get no respect.” He insisted that he had a hand in the founding of both organizations and wanted constant recognition. Leaders of both associations, however, had their doubts.
Time marched on and things changed. After I resigned from Atlas to work for NARI and after Joseph Zimmerman and other editors left, the company floundered. Lipsett had grown older, his famous friends were gone, and his world was vanishing before his eyes. He moved the company to a small office on 42nd Street and continued to publish a few magazines. Then, after selling some and retiring others, he himself retired.
One day, he called me to have lunch. In my 15 years as his employee, he had never invited me to lunch, but after I left the invitations flowed in. We met at the Athletic Club, his favorite luncheon spot. He was in a terminal mood that day, lamenting, “Everything I worked for is going down the drain.” Then, in a surprise move, he asked, “How would you like to take over the Waste Trade Journal? I’d like to give it to you as a present.”
But it was too late. By that time, the magazine was an antique publication, an anachronism with few readers. I thanked him but said no. He urged me to think it over for, in his mind, it was still an important magazine.
Toward the end of his life, after his wife died, he lived alone in a fashionable East Side apartment building. I visited now and then to keep him company, tell him what was happening in the scrap industry, and bring him news of his former employees. He was a sick and failing individual, hardly the publishing giant of yesteryear.
One of his daughters called to tell me of his death and to ask if I’d write an obituary and send it to the New York Times, which I did. I was one of only a handful of past employees—out of the hundreds who had worked for him—who attended his funeral at Campbell’s on Madison Avenue. •
Charles Lipsett, president and publisher of Atlas Publishing Co. Inc. (New York City)—my employer for about 15 years—came from hardy New England stock and was a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman. Domineering, headstrong, and penny-pinching, he managed to build a publishing empire that, at one time, offered more than a dozen magazines and daily trade papers.