John Dewey (1859-1952), America's most prominent and most prolific philosopher and educator, was the foremost exponent of pragmatism. From his chairs at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, he was a major force in the development of progressive education.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) was an exponent of legal realism. Although an impassioned defender of local autonomy with a Spencerian social philosophy, he was tolerant and disturbed by formalistic abuses of the law. He felt free to side with victims, not because of empathy for the groups to which they belonged, but because he was capable of questioning the assumptions of the majority.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) was a quintessential progressive. FDR called Brandeis the "prophet Isaiah" but the judge liked to think of himself as the "people's lawyer." An exponent of the regulatory state, Brandeis was the architect of the Federal Trade Commission.
Edward Ross (1866-1951) was a founder of sociology in the United States. Ross was an advocate of eugenics or hereditary control for social uplift and racial purity. In the following passage, Ross details the consequences of what he considered unbridled population growth and discusses birth control.
Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) was the founder and leader of the birth control movement. In this excerpt, she describes her long battle to legalize contraception. She attracted a significant following by making eugenicist arguments for "better babies."