James Brindley was born in the year seventeen
'sixteen, the third of the reign of George
the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill,
midway between the remote hamlets of the
High Peak of Derby. There his father, more
devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running,
than to his work as a cottier, cultivated the
little croft he rented, got into bad company and
poverty, and left his children neglected and
untaught. The idle man had an industrious wife,
who taught the children, of whom James was the
eldest, what little she knew; but they must all
help to earn as soon as they were able, and
James Brindley earned wages at any ordinary
labourer's work that he could get until he was
seventeen years old. He was a lad clever with
his knife, who made little models of mills, and
set them to work in mill-streams of his own
contrivance. The machinery of a neighbouring
grist-mill was his especial delight, and had given
the first impulse to his modellings. He and his
mother agreed that he should, bind himself,
whenever he could, to a millwright, and at the
age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks' trial,
become apprentice for seven years to Abraham
Bennett, wheelwright and millwright, at the
village of Sutton, near Macclesfield, which was
the market town of Brindley's district.

The millwrights were then the only engineers;
they worked by turns at the foot-lathe, the
carpenter's bench, and the anvil, and in country
places where there was little support for division
of labour, they had to find skill or invention to
meet any demand on mechanical skill. Bennett
was not a sober man, his journeymen were a
rough set, and much of the young apprentice's
time was at first occupied in running for beer.
He was taught little, and had to find out everything
for himself, which he did but slowly, so
that, during some time, he passed with his
master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the
farm-work from which he had been taken. But,
after two years of this sort of pupilage, a fire
having injured some machinery in a small silkmill
at Macclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring
away the damaged pieces, and by his suggestions
on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner,
the mill-superintendent, an intelligence that
caused his master to be applied to for Brindley's
aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was
unwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement
of the friendly superintendent with
remarkable ability, and was surprised that his
master and the other workmen seemed to be
dissatisfied with his success. When they chaffed
him at the supper celebrating the completion of
the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a
gallon of the best ale that before the lad's
apprenticeship was out, he would be a cleverer
workman than any of them there present, master
or man. This was a joke against Brindley
among his fellow-workmen; but in another year
they found "the young man Brindley" specially
asked for when the neighbouring millers needed
repairs of machinery, and sometimes he was
chosen in preference to the master himself.
Bennett asked "the young man Brindley" where
he had learnt his skill in millwork, but he could
tell no more than that it "came natural like."
He even suggested and carried out improvements,
especially in the application of the waterpower,
and worked so substantially well, that
his master said to him one day, "Jem, if thou
goes on i' this foolish way o' workin', there will
be very little trade left to be done when thou
comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o'
wark's th' ruin o' trade."

But presently Jem's "firmness o' wark" was
the saving of his master. Bennett got a
contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane,
upon the model of a mill near Manchester.
Bennett went to examine the Manchester mill,
brought back a confused and beery notion of it,
and, proceeding with the job, got into the most
hopeless bewilderment. An old hand, who had
looked in on the work, reported over his drink
at the nearest public-house that the job was a
farce, and that Abraham Bennett was only
throwing away his employer's money. Next
Saturday, after his work, young Jem Brindley
disappeared. He was just of age, and it was
supposed that he had taken it into his head to
leave his master and begin life on his own
account. But on Monday morning, there he
was at his work, with his coat off, and the
whole duty to be done clear in his head. He
had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile
walk to the pattern mill near Manchester. On
Sunday morning he had asked leave of its
proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent
some hours on Sunday in the study of its
machinery, and then had walked the twenty-five
miles back to resume his work and save his
master from a failure that would have been disastrous
to his credit. The conduct of the work
was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and
proceeded with the rest so accurately, that the
contract was completed within the appointed
time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons
concerned. After that piece of good service,
Bennett left to James Brindley the chief care
over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley
carried on to completion all work then in
hand, and wound up the accounts for the benefit
of his old master's family. That done, he set
up in business on his own account at the town
of Leek, in Staffordshire; he was then twenty
-six years old, having served seven years as an
apprentice, and two years as journeyman.

Leek was then but a small market town with
a few grist-mills, and Brindley had no capital;
but he made himself known beyond Leek as a
reliable man whose work was good and durable,
who had invention at the service of his
employers, and who always finished a job within
the stipulated time. He did not confine
himself to mill-work, but was ready to undertake
all sorts of machinery connected with the draining
of mines, the pumping of water, the smelting
of iron and copper, for which a demand was
then rising, and became honourably known to
his neighbours as "the Schemer." At first he
had no journeyman or apprentice, and he cut
the tree for his own timber. While working as