By 1913 nearly one billion Postcards per year were being mailed in the United States alone. In 1873 the US Postal Service Maintained a monopoly restricting private publishers and printers from producing postcards.
The USPS was the only establishment allowed to print postcards. The first privately printed and mailed postcards were introduced in 1898 when congress passed the Private Mailing Act but prior only plain government issued postcards could be mailed.
The letter rate of 2 cents was lowered after the private mailing act was passed and was lowered to one cent. Once this act was passed the term "Private Mailing Card" started being used because the USPS wanted to be sure that there cards were easily distinguishable from those of the private sector.
During the private mailing era you could not leave a message on the back of the card so a small space was left on the front for notes from the sender and the words private mailing act would be printed on the back, if it said carte Postale it could be used in the international mail system.
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It was around the 1900s "real photo" postcards were being used but at this time they were expensive and hard to produce.
Previous to the 1915 most photo postcards found their way to the untied states from German printers who dominated the market until world war 1 when most postcards were produced here in the untied states.
Cards Printed in 1912 routinely had white boarders, the reason for this was that US printers needed to save ink due to the world war one and its effects on imports to the USA.