Soaps itself!
IIRC, 1948-49 was the first Gyromatic that didn't have to be bolted to the floor. This looks to be from about that time as the first Bendix clothes dryer was intro'd about 1948 or so.
To the left of the washer, you can see the edge of the vent on the corner next to the washer. It vented from the front into the room, into a handy lint catcher hanging on the front of the machine. There was an optional exterior venting kit that ran a pipe from the front of the dryer over the top or around the side, connecting to the vent to the outside. The machine recycled some of the warm air exhausted from the drum, reheating it to run through the drum again so there wasn't a huge volume of air moving through the final exhaust.
