After graduating in 1947, Leslie became a salesman for
Procter & Gamble. When Merrill Lynch announced it would be starting a program to bring Wall Street to the rest of the country, Leslie quickly joined the program. He qualified for Merrill Lynch broker training and after a year of study on Wall Street was assigned to its Columbus office. Soon after his placement in the Columbus office, he became impatient with the dormant stock market. He noticed that a greater challenge was the daily price activity in the grain futures market. In addition to this problem, there was a need to educate farmers on how to hedge their crops. Leslie moved to Chicago and there, during his fifty years in the business world, appraised the overnight news and then wrote a pre-opening market letter to the brokers at four different New York Stock Exchange Member firms. In 1961, he felt that the first-of-the-month crop production farmer-based estimates issued by the
United States Department of Agriculture on the 10th of the month were too delayed to enable efficient
agribusiness marketing decisions. He developed his own faster released production estimates by using card reports received from 3,000 grain elevator managers. At the request of the Nixon White House, and recommendation from Senator
Hubert Humphrey, Conrad Leslie conducted a special survey to estimate the size of the coming U.S. wheat harvest before the Russian wheat sale was granted by Washington. His presented supply and demand projection was very helpful to the country because it indicated that the approaching U.S. harvest would permit the sale with Russia. Another notable contribution of Leslie's was his influential writings, which were instrumental in legislation that allowed Americans to own gold. Back when gold was priced at $35 an ounce, Leslie noted the French were taking our gold from
Fort Knox. Through his writings to 2,000 elevator managers and regular farmland press, radio, and television interviews, he was persistently among those who called on Congress to pass the bill that would allow Americans to own gold. President Nixon, with support of Senator
Jacob K. Javits and Congressman
Phil Crane, lifted the ban on August 15, 1975. ==Legacy==