Integral to the women's rights and suffrage campaigns were its newspapers. The Congressional Union under Alice Paul founded its own periodical, The Suffragist, in 1913. Allender was the key artist for the publication which featured political cartoons. The writers were Alice Paul and Rheta Childe Dorr, the founding editor, who came to Washington at the urging of Paul and Lucy Burns, another suffrage leader. Allender, having been coaxed by Paul, found she had a talent for drawing cartoons and became The Suffragist's "official cartoonist". Her first political cartoon, which portrayed the campaign and women's need for the ballot, was published in the June 6, 1914 issue on heavy 10" x 13" paper. The entire front page was subsequently occupied by a cartoon by Nina Allender. A 1918 review of her work conceded that her early period "dealt with old suffrage texts, still trying to prove that woman's place was no longer in the home."
