Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/700

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

suffrage sentiment among college women and men both before and after graduation." It became auxiliary to the National Association and its annual conventions were to be held at the same time and place as those of the association. In its early existence office space was given in the national suffrage headquarters in New York City.

For the next nine years this National College League was a vital force in the movement for woman suffrage. It soon had the largest voting delegation at the national suffrage conventions except that of New York. Dr. Thomas remained its president and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw its honorary vice-president. Miss Martha Gruening and Miss Florence Allen (now Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Cleveland, O.), were secretaries, and from 1914 Mrs. Ethel Puffer Howes (Smith) of New York City. Organizers were sent throughout the States to form new leagues and lecturers of note were engaged to address league meetings. Among the latter were Professor Frances Squire Potter of the University of Minnesota; Dr. B. O. Aylesworth and Mrs. Helen Loring Grenfell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Colorado; Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman of New York and Mrs. Philip Snowden of England. Dr. Shaw spoke a number of times. In 1915 a lecture tour among the colleges was arranged for Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst. Literature and letters were sent to colleges and to graduates. In 1914, for instance, twenty colleges in New York State were supplied and letters were sent to a thousand graduates in New Jersey, campaigns being in progress in those States. During the Iowa campaign in 1916 the colleges of that State received 12,000 leaflets. Travelling libraries of twenty-five volumes relating to suffrage were circulated among the colleges. The most important achievement of an individual league was that in California in 1911. Under the presidency of Miss Charlotte Anita Whitney the work of the league of over a thousand members was a large factor in the success of the campaign for a woman suffrage amendment. In 1917, during the second New York campaign, Miss M. Louise Grant (Columbia), under the auspices of the National and State leagues, made forty-five speeches to arouse the college women,