The '50's were indeed "Puritanical" by today's standards; it was the end of Victorianism by about 1957. But AFA comic books were concerned, there were reportedly 500 different titles of them in the early to mid fifties, coming out almost every month.
And if Atlas was doing so bad, why did they have such a large proportion of them? Horror comics alone, Adventures into Weird Worlds, Adventures into Terror, Astonishing, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Journey into Mystery, Menace, Marvel Tales, Mystery Tales, Mystic, Strange Tales, Spellbound, Uncanny Tales; yeah, pre-code era, they were really hurtin', weren't they?