PRIMARY SOURCEA You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes many of them were broken and stuffed with rags.the smell was so fetid [foul] as almost to knock the two men down. and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up. .they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, ELIZABETH GASKELL, Mary Barton

1. She is referring to the working class.

2. These people have very little money to survive and are exploited with great intensity. This means that they do not have the resources to live in better conditions.

Explanation:

The text presented in the above question above is an excerpt from the book "Mary Barton" written by Elizabeth Gaskell. In this book we are introduced to the Barton family, a very poor family that belongs to the working class and is therefore a victim of exploitation by their bosses and receive very low wages that barely allow them to eat properly. In this story the Barton family lives in a very precarious situation and after the family's father is arrested, the whole family falls into disgrace, becoming even poorer and living in terrible conditions, which are the conditions shown in the above excerpt. They live that way because they don't have any resources, capable of improving their lives.

no its not a run on sentence however i think you meant wet suits not sours also a run on sentence would be like surfers surf all winter long in southern california by using wet sours to keep them warm and the live their all year long  

the present continuous is a verb tense which is mainly used to indicates that an action is in progress at the moment of speaking.  

it is formed using: person + verb to be (am/is/are) +verb + - ing form  

example: i am studying at this moment .

in addition, the present continuous is also used in order to express things that will or will not happen in the near future.

example: i am having dinner with some friends tonight.

the speaker sometimes   uses it   to express that an action is repeated and it causes irritation on the part of the speaker

example: my sister is constantly complaining about everything.