Attempts to cultivate rice as a cash crop have a long history in the United States. beginning with the English settlement at Jamestown.

Until the Civil War, rice cultivation was associated with slavery – and particularly-cruel working conditions.

Mechanization led to the expansion of rice cultivation beyond the South, although Louisiana and Arkansas remain leading centers of rice production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States

Sometime before 1910, Ernest was working in Abbeville, a city in south-central Louisiana -about 150 miles west of New Orleans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeville,_Louisiana

Ernest mailed a postcard to Mrs. Emma Gilbert of Marshall, Illinois.

The city of Marshall was founded in 1835, when the National Road (the nation’s first federal highway) reached east-central Indiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall,_Illinois

The face of the postcard is a photograph of a “Vermillion Rice Farm Scene”.

The degree of labor-intensity is indicated by the number of workers who stand beside the harvesting equipment.

To the right, bags of rice are stacked, presumably for shipping.

Unfortunately, this postcard was not well-preserved.

It appears to have been pasted into an album, or to have become stuck to other papers.

The reverse has large tears where the surface has been pulled away.

Alas, the front is also marred by many folds and tears.

I have made digital repairs to the worst of the marks on the face.

Thus, we are unable to read much of the message Ernest inscribed, and we cannot discern any clues about his relationship to Mrs. Gilbert.

There is a legible reference to Xmas on the reverse, and Ernest concludes his message by promising to “give him a couple more cowboy dances and a fine time”.

One hopes that Ernest succeeded in his work and that he was able to arrange the cowboy dances.