Kuhn Loeb's major customers were railroads, and by the mid-1920s, Strauss was helping to arrange financing for new railroad terminal buildings in Cincinnati and Richmond and for the reorganizations of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. By 1926 his yearly compensation from the firm had reached $75,000 () and by the next year, $120,000 (). Subsequently, Strauss arranged the firm's financing for steel companies such as Inland Steel, Republic Steel, and Great Lakes Steel. He became a full partner in 1929, at which point he was making a million dollars a year, and he endured the Wall Street Crash of 1929 without significant financial damage. With the firm he helped bring to market Kodachrome film for Eastman Kodak and the Polaroid camera for Edwin H. Land.