Elmer Layden, Notre Dame coach from 1934-1940.

Campus Life this month features the story of life during the Depression in the US and on the Notre Dame campus…

Imagine you just lost your job. Nope, can't get another one. Just about everybody else is out of work too. Better hurry to the bank -oops, sorry, the bank has gone under. Your savings have disappeared.

Now imagine there's no such thing as welfare, no social security, no unemployment insurance, no foodstamps, no federally-subsidized housing, no government loans to individuals.

Think about this: How are you going to eat tonight, or pay next month's rent? Don't bother moving on. The whole world's in the same soup...

Welcome to the Depression.

That was about the state of things when Elmer Layden took over at Notre Dame. The lanky Iowan with an infectious Midwestern twang had been the fullback of Rockne's Four Horsemen, an association he certainly had cause to regret over the years. The newspapers never let him forget it, replaying the Four Horsemen theme deafeningly in almost every game account, every column that mentioned the Notre Dame coach. Innumerable sports page cartoons were printed with Layden on a horse, or leading a horse, or looking like a horse, the bigger-than-life spirit of Rockne grinning benignly in the background. To the newspapers of the day, Elmer Layden seemed to be always the pupil, never the master.

To his players, Layden either came across as a fine gentleman or a cold fish. No pep-talker or glad-hander, he gave pre-game speeches that were basically strategy sessions; his halftime remarks concentrated on reactions and adjustments to the enemy attack. His defensively-oriented teams reflected his own quiet, conservative personality. Glamorous football stars simply did not develop under Elmer Layden; closely knit team players did.

By the time Layden took over at Notre Dame, there was a new boss in Washington as well - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His New Deal was government by alphabetical permutation: SEC, TVA, CCC, FDIC, WPA, The NRA: "We Do Our Part." There were fireside chats and brain trusts, packing the Supreme Court and packing for Hyde Park.

America's bread basket became a dust bowl.

Bank holidays begat soup kitchens and five-day work weeks. Utah was toasted all over the nation when it became the thirty-sixth state to repeal Prohibition. Liquor was in again; bootleggers looked for another racket.

The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped. Mayor Cermak was shot in Chicago. Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger, was betrayed by the lady in Red. America's Top Cop, J. Edgar Hoover, became a public hero.

The Dionne quintuplets were born; all over America, women developed small back pains just thinking about it. Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post took to the air; Franco took Spain; new, inexpensive cameras had everybody taking snapshots.

Edward VIII quit his job, which happened to be King of England, so he could marry an American divorcee. Meanwhile, Benny Goodman began a long reign as the King of Swing, his subjects jitterbugging the years away.

The dirigible Hindenburg went down in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The swastika went up in the Rhineland. Stalin purged and Hitler frothed. Neville Chamberlain became history's all-time sucker.

On the wide silver screen (what theater didn't boast one?) Snow White awakened people to the idea that cartoons were not just kids' stuff. W. C. Fields sneered; Mae West leered; Clark Gable was romantic; the Marx Brothers frantic. Gone With the Wind swept the nation.

Radios were commonplace now. And they brought more than Amos 'n' Andy. They brought college football. Imagine the effect of live sports broadcasts on people who had been raised with a victrola at best. A twist of the dial might bring twenty or more games into the living room. Thus began a malady which even today rages through America at epidemic proportions: the armchair fan.