“Read Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal,” he says. “It’ll tell you how to make your life a very satisfying thing. But it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with money.”
“Oh, OK, thanks, I will,” I reply politely. Then I instantly forget about it. The recommendation of a silly-sounding novel doesn’t seem at all relevant to my story. But later, just as I’m about to wind down the interview, a weird thing happens. It’s when I ask him if he has any advice for wannabe billionaires.
“I don’t know anything worth knowing,” he says. Then he pauses. A mischievous look crosses his face. “I gave you a secret in this interview already on how to make your life way better and you went right by it.”
I look at him, befuddled.
“Hahahahaha!” he says.
“Was it that thing you said about Mr. Hudson and the . . . ?” I say.
“Exactly right!” he roars. “Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal. Read it! You’ll see!”
And so I order it from some secondhand-book place. It’s out of print. It arrives, ancient and battered. It’s kind of pulpy, the story of a Dr. Hudson who encounters a mysterious gravestone engraver named Randolph.
“I now have everything I want and can do anything I wish!” Randolph tells the doctor. “So can you! So can anybody! All you have to do is follow the rules!” Randolph hands Dr. Hudson a “magic page” upon which is written the secret, the rules for “generating that mysterious power I told you about . . .”
You can imagine how excited I am when I get to this part of the novel. But the secret turns out to be underwhelming. It is this: If you perform anonymous good deeds, greatness will visit you. But the philanthropy must be carried out with “absolute secrecy.” That’s the key.
When I read my B. Wayne Hughes transcript, I see that it’s peppered with covert references to Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal. When I asked him which charities he donates to, he said, “I have over the years supported charities.” Then he fell mysteriously silent. Then he said, “If you talk about things you’ve done that you think are worthwhile, you subtract from yourself. And so therefore I will only say my principal charity is children’s cancer and I’ve been doing it for twenty-two years.”
“You don’t want to say how much you’ve given away?” I asked.
“I don’t want to subtract from my pleasure,” he said. “I especially don’t want it written up. It would be a disaster for me. It would hurt me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It would subtract from me,” he said.
Then, later, he said, with an anguished look, “Don’t you think I have an urge to say, ‘I did this and I did that and I got studies going in twenty hospitals . . .’ I have an urge to say that but I’m sitting on it. Why? Because once I say it, I’ve lost it! It’s gone. Forever. The whale doesn’t get harpooned until it rises to the surface to blow. If you do a good deed, a deed you’re proud of, and you don’t tell anybody, it will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever accomplished, but with the highest payoff. You feel good about yourself. It gives you happiness and satisfaction. It makes you different from other people in ways people don’t realize. If you follow the rule, I promise you it is a life-changing event.”
It was a lovely, engaging, strange philosophy. But there’s another side to it. Dr. Hudson chooses whom to bestow his graciousness onto. It’s entirely his choice. Taxation takes that decision out of his hands and gives it to the state. It screws up the formula completely.
Wayne’s avuncular manner deserted him when he talked about what to do about the have-nots. “I remember an advertisement with an Indian in a canoe in a harbor,” he said, “and tears are running down his face because he sees all the trash in the water and he sees what’s happening. That’s how I feel about America. It’s an emotional thing for me.” He paused, and that’s when he said, “I’m a little surprised to find out that I’m an enemy of the state at this time in my life. They talk about your ‘fair share.’ ‘Are you paying your fair share?’ Fair is in the eyes of the beholder.” He paused. “I hope I don’t come off like some big person . . . so conservative . . . I believe in spreading it around, but I believe in doing it myself. . . .”
“So the trash in the river is higher taxes?” I asked.
“It’s the idea of entitlement,” he snapped. “That idea wasn’t there in the history of this country. I remember passing a building and my father saying to me, ‘That’s the poorhouse. You don’t ever want—’”
And then we were interrupted by his daughter, a woman in her forties. She came into the room, kissed him, and asked him if he was going to walk along the beach later. He said he was. She kissed him again and left and he didn’t return to the “poorhouse” anecdote. Instead he said, “When the politicians said, ‘Everybody is entitled to a house,’ you saw what happened. And now you have ‘Everybody is entitled to go to college.’ Which is stupid! When I went to college I had to drive a truck to pay. I had a partial scholarship, but I took care of myself.”
“So you’re saying everybody is entitled to college, but they should have to pay their own way?” I asked.
“Some people don’t belong in college!” he said. “That should occur to you.”
I understand why Wayne’s great love in life is his stud farm. There’s something very Thoroughbred-horses about his view of the world. Perhaps the different ways Nick and Wayne made their money may explain their politics. Nick sees an economy of luck. He got lucky, and he understands that fragility for what it is. Wayne sees an economy of earning where those with exceptional talent or exceptional grit rise, as they should, to the top.
For Wayne’s philosophy to work, though, he needs to see those who don’t make it as kind of deserving of their ill fortune. He talked to me about “derelicts on welfare” in Los Angeles who check themselves into the hospital because they’re “bored” and “want feeding” and “we’re paying for all that kind of activity.” He said too much tax money is spent on “guys going to chiropractors, guys getting massages all over the country! On us! Give me a break. Guys getting Viagra!” He talked about “Los Angeles bus drivers who are on permanent stress leave because someone spat on them when they got on the bus and now they’re emotionally upside down. More than half the bus drivers are out on stress leave! Systems like that cannot work!”
Later, I hunt for published data that back up Wayne’s feckless-bus-driver nightmare scenario. I can’t find any. I do find something else, though—plenty of statistics showing that a guy with Wayne’s level of wealth has never had it so good in America. And yet, of all the people I interview, Wayne is the only one who seems angry about the politics of his situation. Frantz, Dennis, Rebecca—those at the bottom looking up—showed no animosity at all.
The government used to tell people like Wayne exactly what to do with huge chunks of their income: Hand it over and we’ll decide how to use it. Today, America’s richest citizens have won the right to control these decisions themselves, and that’s a big reason why income inequality is so dire. For every secret philanthropist like Wayne, there are many who give little or nothing back. Meanwhile, Dennis and Rebecca continue to tread water, and might even drown.
Wayne’s heart is in the right place. He’s not parsimonious. He started from nothing and he wants to give back, but he wants to choose how. He genuinely believes that higher taxes ruin society. But I can’t help thinking that when he talks about bored derelicts and emotionally weak bus drivers, he’s really—even if he doesn’t know it—talking about Frantz.