Sudduth was called in July 1887 to a position as editor of Oak and Ivy Leaf, organ of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union (Y. W. C. T.

[4] During the year 1880, she was assistant principal of the high school at Dwight, Illinois, and in the fall of 1881, she entered Wellesley College for a teacher's special course of literature and history, where she remained but a few months, being compelled to give up study on account of failing eyesight.

[4] Interested since before her graduation in the temperance movement, she spent considerable time while abroad in investigating the cause of drunkenness in the countries visited, and as a special correspondent to Bloomington, Illinois papers and the Union Signal, she displayed literary ability.

In 1887, upon her return to the United States, she accepted the editorship of the Oak and Ivy Leaf, a publication projected by Mary Allen West.

[4] In 1890, her name first appeared as an editor of the Union Signal, to which her services had been rendered from the time of her arrival in Chicago, and in January, 1892, she assumed the managing editorship, where her journalistic ability and cultured mental and literary qualifications were called into requisition.