announced to be "to promote
equal 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, which contributed to
the victory for the suffrage amendment in November.

The gaining of the franchise in this influential State made a Federal
Amendment a certainty of the not distant future and in December