Gerard Swope

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gerard Swope, former president of the General Electric Company and onetime chairman of the New York City Housing Authority, died yesterday at his home, 161 East Seventy-ninth Street. He was 84 years old.

Although retired, Mr. Swope kept office hours until last Friday, when he became ill with a cold. He died of pneumonia.

Until last December he resided at his estate, The Croft, near Ossining, N.Y. Up to three years ago he was a familiar figure riding horseback early every morning along bridle trails in the area.

Mr. Swope's fascination with electricity started in his early childhood. As a boy in St.. Louis where he was born Dec. 1, 1872 he tinkered with electric toys and appliances, and read books on the subject.

In his high school days he drew plans for a motor. His father, Isaac Swope, a watchcase manufacturer, purchased the necessary casings. To the surprise of his family, the motor actually worked, and the decision was made to send him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the summer of 1893, after having completed his second year at M.I.T., young Swope decided to visit the World's Fair at Chicago. Lacking funds, he obtained a daytime job--"it was a dirty, oily job," he said later--with General Electric in Chicago, and visited the fair in the evenings.

Thus did his name enter, for the first time, the books of the company he later was to head. "Swope, G., helper, per day, $1," the notation read.

Received E. E. Degree Two years later, he graduated from M. I. T. with a degree in electrical engineering. Times were hard, but a foreman for the Western Electric Company grudgingly put him to work pulling transformers apart in the company's Chicago plant--again at $1 a day.

A few years later Mr. Swope became a designing engineer in the power apparatus department and in 1901 he was sent to St. Louis to organize an office of the company.

In 1906 Mr. Swope returned to Chicago to take charge of the company's power apparatus business. Two years later he was general sales manager in the New York office. He became a vice president and director in charge of commercial work in the United States and of the manufacturing, engineering and commercial work in the foreign field in 1913. In his twenty years with Western Electric he opened several branches in this country and also in China and Japan.

During World War I Mr. Swope was a member of the general staff of the Army, serving as assistant director of purchase, storage and traffic. For this service he received the Distinguished Service Medal from this country, the Order of the Rising Sun from Japan and was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.

After the war Mr. Swope became president of the International General Electric Company. In 1922 he was made president of the General Electric company.

Under his guidance General Electric's sales increased steadily. Before 1922 the only product it sold directly to the public on the basis of mass production and wide distribution was the incandescent electric lamp. Its principal products had been apparatus for generating, transmitting and controlling electricity. Under Mr. Swope's direction the company began extensive manufacture of electric appliances for home use.

Director of N. B. C. Mr. Swope was also closely identified with the development of the radio and radio accessories. He was a director of the National Broadcasting Company, the RCA Phototone Company, the RCA Victor Company and the RCA Radiotron Company. He was also a director in fourteen other companies associated with the electric and power industry.

In 1939, after eighteen years as president, Mr. Swope relinquished the office. He had reached G. E.'s retirement age of 67. Soon thereafter he became chairman of the New York City Housing Authority, a full-time job. He left that post in 1942 to resume the presidency of G. E. for two years while Charles Edward Wilson served with the War Production Board. At Mr. Wilson's return Mr. Swope was elected honorary president.

Both during his busy industrial career and after retirement from it Mr. Swope was active in a variety of organizations and a leader in many of them.

For the last few years he had been chairman of Queensview, Kingsview and Queensview West, privately financed cooperative housing projects for middle-income families. It was a voluntary, unpaid position inspired by Mr. Swope's interest in providing better housing for this group.

Queensview, in Long Island City, Queens, was built in 1950; Kingsview, in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, was completed last year, and Queensview West, also in Long Island City, will be opened shortly.

Among the organizations he headed were national Mobilization for Human Needs, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Westchester County Park Commission, Business Advisory and Planning Council, Department of Commerce; Eighth American Red Cross Roll Call, Greenwich House in New York, Citizens Committee for Reciprocal World Trade and the Institute of Pacific Relations.

In 1931 Mr. Swope proposed the "Swope Plan" for stabilizing industry. It emphasized the responsibility of industry for preventing unemployment and included a provision for unemployment insurance. For this proposal and other social service he received the gold medal of the National Academy of Social Sciences in 1932. Ten years later he won the Hoover Medal for his "Constructive public service in the field of social, civic and humanitarian effort."

Honorary degrees were conferred on Mr. Swope by Union College and Rutgers, Colgate and Washington Universities and by Stevens Institute of Technology.

Last May, Mr. Swope, accompanied by his daughter, visited Israel for the first time. He received an honorary Doctor of Science in technology from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

In 1901 Mr. Swope married Miss Mary Dayton Hill, who died in 1955. Surviving are three sons, Gerard Jr. and David, both of Westchester County, and John of Beverly Hills, Calif., and his daughter, Miss Henrietta H. Swope, an astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, Calif. Mr. Swope also leaves his younger brother, Herbert Bayard Swope, former executive editor of The World and first State Racing Commissioner.