The election returns in 1904 showed that the Democratic candidate had failed to engage the enthusiasm of his party, for the vote cast for him was more than a million and a quarter short of that cast for Mr. Bryan in 1900. The personal popularity of Mr. Roosevelt was fully evidenced in the electoral and popular votes. Of the former he secured 336 against 140 cast for his opponent, and of the latter he polled nearly 400,000 more than Mr. McKinley. Nevertheless the total vote throughout the country was nearly half a million under that of 1900, showing an undoubted apathy or a dissatisfaction with the two old parties. This dissatisfaction was further demonstrated in a startling way by the heavy increase in the socialist ranks, a jump from about 95,000 in 1900 to more than 400,000. _The Achievements of Mr. Roosevelt's Administrations_ Doubtless the most significant of all the laws enacted during Mr. Roosevelt's administrations was the Hepburn Act passed in 1906. This law increased the number of the Interstate Commerce Commission[62] to seven, extended the law to cover pipe lines, express companies, and sleeping car companies, and bridges, ferries, and railway terminals. It gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to reduce a rate found to be unreasonable or discriminatory in cases in which complaints were filed by shippers adversely affected; it abolished "midnight tariffs" under which favored shippers had been given special rates, by requiring proper notice of all changes in schedules; and it forbade common carriers to engage in the transportation of commodities owned by themselves, except for their own proper uses. The Hepburn bill, however, did not confer upon the Interstate Commerce Commission that power over rates which the Commission had long been urging as necessary to give shippers the relief they expected. Senator La Follette, fresh from a fight with the railways in Wisconsin, proposed several radical amendments in the Senate, and endeavored without avail to secure the open support of President Roosevelt.[63] The Senator insisted that it would be possible under the Hepburn bill "for the commission to determine whether rates were _relatively reasonable_, but not that they were _reasonable per se_; that one rate could be compared with another, but that the Commission had no means of determining whether either rate so compared was itself a reasonable rate." No one can tell, urged the Senator, whether a rate is reasonable until the railway in question has been evaluated. This point he pressed with great insistence, and though defeated at the time, he had the consolation of having the principle of physical valuation enacted into law in 1913.[64] At all events, the railways found little or no fault with the Hepburn law, and shortly afterward began to raise their rates in the face of strong opposition from shippers.