July/August 1998
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York Bureau Chief for Scrap.
Everyone remembers a good teacher, someone who taught certain lessons that became useful later in life. For me, Joe Zimmerman was such a teacher. He taught me the trade of metals reporting.
I met Joe in 1942 when I went to interview for an editorial position with one of the many trade papers published by New York City-based Atlas Publishing Co.
Joe was editor-in-chief of all Atlas publications, a mass of magazines and newspapers that ran the gamut from Noble Dog to Waste Trade Journal. Noble Dog was unfortunately gone by the time I arrived, as was the fabulous Wine and Liquor Journal. But the Daily Metal Reporter was going strong, as was the Waste Trade Journal, the oldest and only all-scrap magazine, established in 1905.
We were sitting in a small cubbyhole of an office, and my eye was transfixed on the Phi Beta Kappa key that dangled from his vest pocket. I was nervous for two reasons: My editorial experience was sparse, encompassing work in a print shop and a short stint editing directories, and, among his achievements, Joe had earned a Ph.D., and being interviewed by someone holding the title of Doctor was daunting.
Joe’s Phi Beta Kappa key, however, gave me a possible avenue of entry. I decided to talk not about journalism or editing, but about education.
It turned out to be a smart move.
In all the years I knew Joe, he always wore a vest. In so doing, he was a throwback to an earlier era of vest-wearers consisting of teachers, professors, professionals who possessed Ph.D. degrees, and many who’d made Phi Beta Kappa. In fact, Joe had been a professor at the College of the City of New York before he traded in his cap and gown for an editor’s eyeshade. As a recent graduate of that college and Columbia University, I could trade “school talk” with him.
The fortunate result? I got the job.
Atlas Publishing was a small but powerful trade publishing empire, set in its own building on West 25th Street in Manhattan. It had its own printing plant on the premises—a rare possession for a trade paper publisher. Its Daily Metal Reporter—of which I later became market editor—was a leading publication in the metals field, competing actively with American Metal Market.
Before that, however, I went through a succession of apprenticeships on papers such as the Daily Mill Stock Reporter, which published market information for burlap, jute, hemp, sisal, and scrap (then “waste”) paper; Daily Chemical Market, which briefly exposed me to the mysterious world of chemicals; and Federal Sales Record, which covered sales of materials and equipment by the U.S. government.
Atlas Publishing was a noisy, volatile workplace, resembling the kind of newspaper office one sees in the movies, but it nurtured a number of neophyte editors who later went on to bigger and better things. Presiding over all this like a czar was publisher Charles Lipsett, who sent ponderous memos to the staff from his inner office about 2 feet away. But the engine that pumped the publishing house’s energy was Joe Zimmerman, whose contacts in the metals industry were enormous.
Joe knew and called every important metal executive by his first name and could gain access to any company in the industry with a single phone call. It was this intimacy that made the Daily Metal Reporter the influential paper it was at that time.
Looking back, I realize how much I learned from watching him and listening to him as he talked with executives about the metal markets. No matter how friendly he was with them, he never took anybody’s word for a market position without checking and double-checking. “Never rely too much on a single individual, no matter how much you value his opinion,” he once told me. “And don’t call the same people all the time.” It was a prescription I took to heart in market reporting.
One must remember that in those days producers set metal prices. In this pre-LME and pre-Comex period, we reporters had to call six or seven producers to check the price of copper, zinc, or lead, not as many for aluminum and nickel. Joe taught us to be objective, challenge the producers, if necessary, insist on specific answers, and demand proof that sales had indeed been made at the reported prices.
As time went on, I became editor of the venerable Waste Trade Journal. I tried to abide by Joe’s teachings and, though I never wore a vest, I hoped I could achieve at least a smidgeon of the reputation he’d earned in his lifetime.
In time, too, I got to know Joe more personally. This was a rare treat. For under his stern professor’s mask lived a man with a great sense of humor, tremendous energy, and vast interest in the world around him. As you got closer, you learned more about him. He had a fund of stories and jokes that seemed inexhaustible.
Sometimes these were thrice-told tales, but his telling still managed to make them interesting or humorous. For instance, one day Joe phoned a metal executive whom he’d known for years to congratulate him on his 90th birthday (Joe was 70 himself at the time). This gentleman, he told me, was something of a curmudgeon. The conversation went as follows:
“Good morning, John, this is Zimmie.”
“Who?”
“Joe Zimmerman.”
“Zimmerman? I thought you were dead.”
“No, no, no. I’m fine. I called to wish you happy birthday ... ”
“Thanks.”
“ ... and to say that I hope to be able to wish you another happy birthday next year.”
“Well, if you take good care of yourself, maybe you will.”
It was Joe’s ability to turn the joke on himself that made his humor so enjoyable.
When he reached his own 90th birthday, the Copper Club honored him at one of its well-attended dinners. Dozens of executives—the cream of the metal industries—spoke glowingly of his work and accomplishments. Then Joe finally had his say. Turning to the assembled crowd, he said, “You didn’t come here tonight to hear me make a speech. Instead, I’ll tell a few jokes.” Which he did, to the delight of the huge audience.
One of Joe’s colleagues was Bob Carraway, editor of the Daily Mill Stock Reporter. The contrast between these two men of comparable age was fantastic. They were both reaching the generally accepted retirement age of 65 a few years after I began working at Atlas Publishing, but their points of view about retirement were tremendously different. Bob couldn’t wait to retire and become a gentleman farmer on his spread in Kent, Conn. Joe, on the other hand, kept working for the rest of his life.
When Atlas Publishing gave up the ghost—a few years after I left to join the National Association of Recycling Industries, an ReMA predecessor—Milton Levenson, then head of Miles Metal Corp., graciously offered Joe a position. And when Cerro Copper Products Co. took over Miles, it continued to employ him to his last day.
I once asked Cerro employees about him. “He comes in every day,” they told me, even though he had been informed that it wasn’t necessary. “And he gets there earlier than anyone.”
When I asked Joe about this, he said, “Well, what else do I have to do?” His wife had died and, though he had attentive children and grandchildren, work was his salvation. “I come in in the morning, look at the business news on the ticker, read the mail, talk to a few friends on the phone, then leave about 3 p.m. It’s a satisfying day.”
He died with his boots on, as they say.
At odd moments, I still picture him standing at his desk—he never sat—inspecting the morning paper, looking for items overlooked by others, always in shirt and tie and vest. While he had given up his career in education before I met him, to me it seemed he never stopped teaching. •
Everyone remembers a good teacher, someone who taught certain lessons that became useful later in life. For me, Joe Zimmerman was such a teacher. He taught me the trade of metals reporting.