and the state adoption of the initiative and the referendum, and provisions for old age. He also criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and attacked Roosevelt's decision to invite Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House in 1901. Prior to the 1904 Democratic National Convention, Alton B. Parker, a New York and conservative ally of David Hill, was the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Conservatives feared that Bryan would join with the publisher William Randolph Hearst to block Parker's nomination. Seeking to appease Bryan and other progressives, Hill agreed to a party platform that omitted mention of the gold standard and criticized trusts. In the event, Bryan did not support Parker or Hearst, but rather Francis Cockrell, a Missouri senator whose career had almost wholly unremarkable. Bryan's motivation was not any belief that Cockrell could defeat Roosevelt in the election, but rather that he would lose decisively, thus paving the way for Bryan to be re-nominated in 1908. However, the possibility of Hearst getting the nomination alarmed the party's moderates enough that they moved to support Parker, who was narrowly nominated on the first ballot at the convention, with Cockrell finishing a distant third place. Bryan would nonetheless get his desired outcome when Roosevelt won by the biggest popular vote margin since James Monroe was re-elected without opposition in 1820. Afterwards, Bryan published a post-election edition of The Commoner that advised its readers: "Do not Compromise with Plutocracy". Bryan traveled to Europe in 1903, meeting with figures such as Leo Tolstoy, who shared some of Bryan's religious and political views. In 1905, Bryan and his family embarked on a trip around the globe and visited eighteen countries in Asia and Europe. Bryan funded the trip with public speaking fees and a travelogue that was published on a weekly basis. Bryan’s travels abroad were documented in a study called "The Old World and its Ways," in which he shared his thoughts on different topics such as those related to progressive politics and labor legislation. Bryan was greeted by a large crowd upon his return to the United States in 1906 and was widely seen as the likely 1908 Democratic presidential nominee. Partly due to the efforts of muckraking journalists, voters had become increasingly open to progressive ideas since 1904. President Roosevelt himself had moved to the left, favoring federal regulation of railroad rates and meatpacking plants. However, Bryan continued to