“It's cheap,” replied Orde succinctly. “I don't say it will be good for immediate returns, nor even for returns in the near future, but in twenty or thirty years it ought to pay big on a small investment made now.”
Taylor shook his head doubtfully.
“I don't see how you figure it,” he objected. “We have more timber than we can use in the East. Why should we go several thousand miles west for the same thing?”
“When our timber gives out, then we'll HAVE to go west,” said Orde.
Taylor laughed.
“Laugh all you please,” rejoined Orde, “but I tell you Michigan and Wisconsin pine is doomed. Twenty or thirty years from now there won't be any white pine for sale.”
“Nonsense!” objected Taylor. “You're talking wild. We haven't even begun on the upper peninsula. After that there's Minnesota. And I haven't observed that we're quite out of timber on the river, or the Muskegon, or the Saginaw, or the Grand, or the Cheboygan—why, Great Scott! man, our children's children's children may be thinking of investing in California timber, but that's about soon enough.”
“All tight,” said Orde quietly. “Well, what do you think of Indiana as a good field for timber investment?”
“Indiana!” cried Taylor, amazed. “Why, there's no timber there; it's a prairie.”
“There used to be. And all the southern Michigan farm belt was timbered, and around here. We have our stumps to show for it, but there are no evidences at all farther south. You'd have hard work, for instance, to persuade a stranger that Van Buren County was once forest.”