As a kid, I lived right across the street from the TH&B tracks in Hamilton, and can recall one or two instances where one of these guys would knock on the door, looking for something to eat, in exchange for doing an odd job or two. If they were polite, my Mom would give them a sandwich and something to drink (non-alcoholic), but she didn't expect any work in exchange for it. I was pretty small, so I didn't have any contact with them. They weren't allowed into the house, and ate their meal on the back porch. I had an uncle who "rode the rods" across Canada during the Depression: he later went on to establish the (mythical) Barney Secord's Crop Dusting & Aerial Survey Company, responsible for several shots of my layout, posted elsewhere. He was also the proprietor of Secord Distributors, in South Cayuga on my layout, but that's a whole different tale. If you've seen the picture posted in another thread, with his warehouse in the background, you might "get my drift".
Wayne