The challenges posed by urban life presented rich opportunities for experimentation and reform. As happened in Cleveland with Tom Johnson’s election as mayor, working-class radicals and middle-class reformers often mounted simultaneous challenges to political machines, and these combined pressures led to dramatic change. Many reformers pointed to the plight of the urban poor, especially children. Thus it is not surprising that progressivism, an overlapping set of movements to combat the ills of industrialization, had important roots in the city. In the slums and tenements of the metropolis, reformers invented new forms of civic participation that shaped the course of national politics.