foreign and domestic, and a consolidation of the debt was abandoned to make individual arrangements with debtors with no certainty that everyone would eventually be paid. In November 1849, administrative expenses were limited to 500,000 pesos a month, with two thirds of that going to the War Department. This required a reduction of salaries for officials, leading to the limit to be widely ignored. The government had to use the U.S. war indemnity to continue paying off the deficit. The government raised tariffs only to increase smuggling and an effort to enforce the tariff through patrols failed due to lack of funds and corrupt officials. By 1850 the government deficit was 8.5 million pesos which by the following year had risen to 11.3 million pesos. In addition to the aforementioned measures the government faced the prospect of paying off the deficit by getting into even more debt or by raising taxes and possibly provoking another one of the many revolutions which had regularly afflicted Mexico during the past few decades. Seemingly facing the impossible, the Ministry of Finance was plagued by a series of resignations, and from January 1848 to January 1851, there were sixteen different finance ministers. The rest of Herrera's ministry's were relatively stable. Regardless of the intractable issue of the deficit the economy seemed to be overall improving. Abundant harvests were reported, and the mines began to increase their yields. Construction on a railway and telegraph line was begun, and the first industrial exhibition in Mexico opened on November 1, 1849, in Mexico City. Military issues On November 4, 1848, the army was reduced to 10,000 men, and conscription was abolished, yet the latter measure had to be abrogated when only enough volunteers could be found to fill half of the men needed in the army. Another controversial measure was the prohibition of promotion from rank and file troops. The government preferred that officers come from the military schools and from the pool of officers now unemployed due to army reductions. Even the minister of war protested against this measure but it stood. The government purchased the latest armament and machinery for gun factories, hoping to replace those lost during the war. A pressing issue of national security was the strength of Indian raids on the northern frontier, and the Mexican government had already secured in the Treaty of Guadalupe, American aid in keeping these raids under