Nonetheless, Populist ideas survived into the new century. Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt resurrected many Populist planks and re-cast them in new forms as he tentatively expanded federal regulations of business corporations. By constitutional amendment, direct election of U.S. Senators became law in 1912. The Populist gathering of this year lacked the drill and distinction and wealth of the Republican convention held the month before in the same building. It had not the ebullient aggressiveness of the revolutionary Democratic assembly at Chicago, nor the brilliant drivers who rode the storm there.
Cases are well known of delegates who walked because too poor to pay their railroad fare.
It was one day discovered that certain members of one of the most important delegations were actually suffering for food. The old plutocratic politicians have been out-generaled by the flank move of the People's party. They invaded our field, stole our leader, set him up on a platform they builded from materials they likewise purloined from us for the occasion. Wall street where they belong. The nomination of Thomas E. Watson for the vice presidency by the Populists complicates the situation in an unfortunate degree.