Before proceeding to what would be a major crossroads in Graham’s political career, it is worth considering the influence of other political and social thinkers who would inspire him. Like his influence on Keir Hardie and many others, Henry George’s impact on Graham was that of a medium, between the land issue, and his later full-blown socialism, a step that George himself did not take. An earlier influence, however, one who may have underpinned his early political attitudes, appears to have been the Welsh philanthropist and social reformer Robert Owen (1771–1858), but the only clue to this was a reference in William Morris’s diary of 27 April 1887, where he recorded a speech that he, Morris, had made in Glasgow:

It is not clear what Graham meant by this statement, or if his knowledge of, or interest in Owen, was recent or longer term, but certainly, there are strong resonances of Owen’s theories in Graham’s political and social outlook.

Owen was another practical idealist whose ideas Graham may have been drawn to, and another man, like George, who offered readily understood solutions to societal ills, believing that man’s character was moulded by his cultural and physical environment. Through his social experiments, Owen had attempted ‘to make the workplace “rational,” thus to bring “harmony” to the community, to make it a place where social peace would reign’. This was essentially an aesthetic argument, which would have undoubtedly resonated with Graham’s search for political enlightenment. It also chimed with Joseph Conrad’s assertion that, fundamentally, it was human nature that Graham wished to see changed. Moreover, according to Owen, changes to the environment, and thus man’s character, could be instigated only by ‘those who have influence in the affairs of men’. Whether this idea influenced Graham to become a man of affairs himself can only be conjectured, certainly, it carried a subtext with which Graham undoubtedly agreed – elitism.