Sand And Grit Is Still Just As Much In Laundry As It Was
In the 50s and on through the present, fortunately it is not a great problem because washers today deal with it very well unlike most solid tub washers did, in fact lint, re despoted scum and sand and grit problems were what did in solid tub automatic washers.
Even the better early AWs dealt with sand, grit and scum very well, of course the best selling maker WP & KM never had any problem along with Bendix FL washers, Westinghouse, Blackstone and even the ST GE FF washers were pretty decent on getting rid of sand and grit, so it was only a number of ST washers that really had problems and we all know what happened to all of them.
John L.