A Drugstore War Ends in a Beating on the Street
W. A. Hardy, once manager of the Walla Walla branch of the Stewart Holmes Drug Company, was knocked down and kicked outside the Everett post office — the bitter fruit, he says, of a feud between the town's druggists.
W. A. Hardy, formerly manager of the Walla Walla branch of the Stewart Holmes Drug Company, was unmercifully beaten late Saturday night at Everett by B. F. Dill of the drug firm of Dill & Thomas, and James K. Hawkins, a brother-in-law of Dill.
Hardy claims the assault was the result of a war between the druggists of Everett, but Dill says that Hardy made disparaging remarks about Dill's wife and that the assault was made to get even.
The assault was witnessed by seven or eight people, but none interfered. According to Mr. Hardy's statement, he was just leaving the post office when Dill made a pass at him, and Hawkins struck him in the back of the head, knocking him down. He says the men then jumped on him and pounded and kicked him, especially about the head, until they were tired.
A friend picked him up and led him to his drug store, where a doctor was summoned and his injuries attended to. Last night he was unable to see with either eye. Today he was confined to his bed, but could use his left eye a little.
Hardy is now manager of the Hardy-Stewart Drug Company of Everett. There has been a sort of druggists' war on there for some time which has engendered considerable hard feeling between the different proprietors.
“The assault was witnessed by seven or eight people, but none interfered.”
A price war between competing pharmacies curdled into a street ambush, with a crowd of onlookers who simply watched — a reminder that commercial rivalry in small Washington towns could turn personal and violent long before anyone thought to call a lawyer. Hardy's career carried him from the Walla Walla branch of a drug company to running his own store in Everett, a path that still describes how people move between Washington's smaller cities for work. The detail that seven or eight witnesses stood by while a man was kicked in the head is the part that reads most like a modern headline.
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