An underlying theme in much of the testimony was that industrious, practical, moral men—Americans—might succeed where others had failed. Indeed, in an inverse way, the downfall of the French, the sheer unpleasantness and difficulty of taking the Panama route, began to have a peculiar, compelling kind of attraction. The pesthole could be a proving ground, an opportunity to succeed gloriously, for all the world to see, where a less industrious, less manly, and less virtuous people had failed so ignominiously.
