ostensibly supported by the king. Extended suffrage and proportional representation (under the d'Hondt method) had preserved the right as a parliamentary force yet contributed to a success for the left-wing coalition, when the Liberals and the Social Democrats won the election for the second chamber in 1911. Lindman transferred to the second chamber where he was chairman for the second-chamber right 1912-35, with an interruption in 1917 when he became Minister for Foreign Affairs in Swartz's cabinet. As a leading right-wing politician he had given advice to the King about the creation of the Hammarskjöld and Swartz cabinets, with the goal of blocking the more hard-edged conservative leader of the first-chamber right, Ernst Trygger. During the years 1913-35, Lindman was chairman for the national organisation of right-wing parties, the General Electoral Union – the predecessor of the present Moderate Party – and as such was a driving force in the work to modernize the party organisation, especially after the constitutional change in 1918 which instituted universal male suffrage. Among other innovations he hired an airplane to take him on speaking tours of the country and introduced the political poster. The GEU lost its status as largest party in 1917 to the Social Democrats, which has retained it since (with near-equal support for the parties in the general election of 2010). Proportional representation, however, managed to sustain a considerable support though surpassed by both Liberals and Social Democrats; with the single-member constituencies advanced by Staaff's Liberals had likely diminished all influence. After a hard-fought electoral campaign in 1928, when the Social Democrats had controversially formed a coalition with some Communists and suffered great losses in the election, Lindman formed a right-wing government in minority, after the liberals and the Freeminded (pro-Prohibition liberals) had turned down the King's request for a broader center-right majority government. Among the things this government did, the calling of the conference on peace in the workplace (a move to try to end frequent strikes and lock-outs) in 1928 is worth mentioning. The government resigned in 1930 after the Freeminded and the Social Democrats blocked the proposition for raised customs duty on grain, the goal of which was the strengthening of the agrarian sector. No party or union commanded a majority, which made the 1920s and early 1930s notoriously turbulent. Lindman was a modern kind of party leader, who with involvement and eloquence turned directly to the voters.