In many ways, this chapter serves as a key pivot-point in the story. Previous chapters have charted the changes brought about by industrialization and urbanization--changes that transformed the United States into an industrial power of the first rank. Yet those changes came with high social costs that severely strained the political order, as we saw in Chapter 21. Indeed, it was the wrenching depression of 1893 that galvanized Progressivism, the first national reform movement. Progressivism began in the industrial cities, where the nation's problems were most evident. Middle-class reformers first promoted it as a means of applying expertise, professionalism, and the force of law to the many problems of the new industrial society. Unlike earlier reformers, they did not distrust government. In a pattern typical of liberal reform, Progressives used government as an instrument of change and an agent of the public interest. The modern liberal state--active and interventionist--emerged largely as a result of this Progressive movement, and much of the rest of this text will chart the rise of that state.