In Kansas Elias purchased a newspaper route and put his younger boys, Walt and Roy, to work. The boys would be up by 3:30 a.m., rain or snow, and would have to place every paper neatly behind each customer's door. It was not work Walt enjoyed and the young Disney was moved to tears on more than one occasion. This grueling job may also have had a negative effect on Walt's schooling.

In 1918, at just 16 years old, Walt lied about his age and joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. It was during Red Cross training that Walt began to smoke, the vice that would eventually kill him. And, though it has been glossed over as a harmless prank, (the official Disney web site openly acknowledges the fact but not the morality behind it), Walt also started a small war-souvenir forgery business. Walt turned his artistic skills to doctoring helmets to look battle damaged, then sold them as authentic war souvenirs.

A year later Walt returned to the states and took a job at a commercial art studio drawing animals and farm equipment for catalogs. He soon lost that job and, together with another ex-employee, Ub Iwerks, (a name Dr. Seuss would have loved), formed a commercial art venture known as Iwerks-Disney.