Maybe
Since you weren't sure this is a washer, maybe I better explain to you how wringer washers worked.
In the first half of the 20th century, this is what doing laundry was like. This was the procedure. Start at or before the crack of dawn. Preferably this was done in a basement with a stationary double laundry tub connected to plumbing. Roll the wringer washer up to the tubs. Connect a flexible hose to the faucet and use it to begin filling the washer with hot water. Meanwhile, while it's filling, sort the clothes. Start with the white laundry. While the white laundry is washing, stopper the two tubs and fill them with rinse water. (If no stationary tubs, then you'd have to round up two galvanized steel tubs and fill them up with rinse water. Some people made stands to raise them up to waist level.)
After the whites are washed long enough, turn on the wringer, and wring them into the first rinse tub. Put the second load of clothes in the washer, usually light colors, add a little more soap, and start it washing. By this point the hot water would be cooled down somewhat for the light colors. Meanwhile, take each garment in the rinse tub and dunk it up and down in the water to rinse it. Then turn the wringer perpendicular to the tubs, and wring the clothes into the second rinse tub, and dunk up and down again. Then roll the washer over in front of the second tub, and wring the clothes out into a big laundry basket on the floor.
Lug the clothes out the basement door -- most houses in that era had a basement walk-out door, some with exterior stairs, for this purpose, and hang them out on the line to dry. If you lived in New York City, then you'd lug the clothes up to the roof to dry on lines up there. In the Winter, clothes would get covered with soot from people burning coal for heat, and if the temperature was below the freezing point, the clothes would freeze dry. They'd freeze as stiff as a board, and then the frozen water in the fibers would sublimate, i.e., pass directly from the frozen liquid to the gas state. This happens in your freezer, as ice cubes get smaller each day they're not used. Why didn't people just hang clothes to dry in the basement? Because they got even dirtier there from coal dust, from shoveling coal into the furnace and cleaning out the spent ashes and clinkers. In the Spring the clothes would get covered with pollen.
Anyway, go back in after hanging the load, and by then the light colors should be washed enough. Do the same wringing and rinsing procedure. Put the next load in to wash, usually darker colors, because by now the wash water would be even cooler, and add a little more soap. Never mind that the lint from the lighter laundry would get all over the darker clothes.
When washing was finished, the washer had a drain hose, and it was drained into a floor drain. Some had electric pumps so they could be drained up into a laundry tub with a drain if there was no floor drain.
This was usually done on a Monday. While all these festivities were going on, the homemaker would have a one-pot dinner that needed no tending simmering on the stove or in the oven, such as Boston Baked Beans, ham and beans, or green beans/potatoes/ham or Polish sausage. Back then green beans had strings on the side that had to be stripped off and they took a very long time to cook and get tender.
Somewhere along the line the launderer would cook some starch on the stove and dip the shirt collars and cuffs into the starch and wring it out before hanging shirts on the line to dry, too.
Then all those clothes had to be ironed. I suppose some ironing could start later Monday when the clothes were still damp. Otherwise ironing was Tuesday's chore. Dry clothes were dampened and rolled up while waiting to be ironed.
Automatic washers did not hit the market until after World War II, and they were beyond the budget of most middle class Americans until the 1950s, and even then they were the equivalent of several thousand dollars today. But maybe now you understand why all the ads for 1950s automatic washers feature women in their high heels and shirt dresses grinning so gleefully.
That said, as with any change, there were resisters who refused to switch to automatics, and wringers were still made in small quantities by Maytag and Speed Queen until the 1980s. The people who refused to go automatic had the following objections to them:
automatics wasted too much water and soap because each wash load got a full tub of fresh water,
automatics did not get clothes as clean because their tubs were larger and deeper, whereas the small, shallow wringer tubs meant that all the clothes were getting agitated at all times,
automatics only rinsed once rather than twice so laundry would get dingy,
automatics did not give as much flexibility for longer wash times and extra rinsing,
automatics took longer, and too late, to get clothes out on the line to dry because with a wringer, one could be rinsing one load while the next was washing.
Those who were most fastidious about laundry probably changed the wash water for different types of fabrics, and probably changed the rinse water for each load so that clothes would be rinsed thoroughly and stay snowy white. Those who were less fastidious probably re-used the same rinse water all day and had dingy white laundry.
This club has a group of wringer washer aficionados who maintain and use wringer washers to this day.
So there you have it.
At one time, Tide, which was new because it was detergent rather than soap, advertised that there was no need to rinse clothes washed in it, thus saving all that hassle. Never mind what rashes and chafing that stiff, unranked clothes must have caused.
And I guess one last thing. Back then some people boil washed clothes, especially whites. There were special gas stoves/burners that were a little more than knee high and that a galvanized steel wash tub would fit on top of. And before powdered detergent, people bought bars of laundry soap and grated it into the wash with a grater. To this day, that bar laundry soap is sold, but I forget the two brand names. Zote? Beyond me why anybody would want to mess with that, but whatever. There is a community of people who buy those bars and grate it and mix it with washing soda and other things to make their own cheap laundry detergent. Homemade laundry detergent recipes abound on the internet.
So there you have it!
