On the other hand, the opponents of prevention and dissolution, of whom Mr. George W. Perkins is probably the most conspicuous, point to the obvious economies of large-scale over small-scale production, and contend that these are sufficient reason for permitting and even encouraging the great combinations. The power to oppress competitors by unjust methods of business, and the public by extortionate prices, should be kept under rigid control by supervision, and government regulation of maximum prices. But the arguments advanced in favour of this position are never conclusive. Most of its advocates fail to realise, or at least to take adequately into account, the difference between large-scale production and production by a monopoly. While the large plant and the large business organisation have in many lines of manufacture and trade a considerable advantage over the small plant and the small organisation, there is not a scintilla of evidence to show that the efficiency of magnitude increases indefinitely with magnitude. There is no proof that the maximum efficiency is reached only with the maximum size of the business unit. On the contrary, all the evidence that we have points to the conclusion that in every field of industrial and commercial enterprise, all the economies of magnitude and of combination are obtained long before the concern becomes a monopoly. There is not an industry of any importance in the United States in which all the advantages of bigness and concentration cannot be made operative in concerns that control as low as twenty-five per cent. of the total product. The highest economy and efficiency can be obtained without monopoly. Indeed, this is admitted by the more reasonable advocates of the regulation and price-fixing policy. While maintaining that "concentration must go far in order to give the maximum of efficiency," President Van Hise does not hold "that it should go to the extent that the element of monopoly enters"; and he would have the law "declare restraint of trade unreasonable that gets to monopoly," and fix the definite per cent. of business control which constitutes a monopoly.[184] We are justified, therefore, in concluding that the theory of prevention and dissolution (provided that the competing units are not made so small as to destroy the certain economies of magnitude) rather than the theory of permission and regulation, indicates the sound economic and social policy of dealing with monopolies. _Legalised Price Agreements_