That does not look like an excessive amount of dust/ dirt in an oil bath air cleaner. We usually run our John Deere gas and diesel tractor engines 100 hours between Oil, Grease and Filter. We also clean the Oil Baths at that time. They sometimes have a pretty deep accumilation of fine dirt particles depending on the field conditions we have been operating them in. Yours looks like the Optional Oil bath filter of at least 1947 thru 1952.
